Two days in the lap of luxury

So my SIT group spent this past weekend visiting Fes and Meknes, inland cities a few hours east of Rabat, and I had an amazing time. Sorry if this gets list-like and tedious, but as much for my own memory as for my loyal readership, I want to get all of this into writing.

Saturday was a long, packed, awesome day. We met at school at 7:45 in the morning (you can imagine how cheery we were at that point), lugged our bags and huge packages of bottled water onto a tour bus waiting outside the medina, and took off. After two hours of napping and one break at an awesome rest stop (Western toilets and coffee, this equals our idea of awesome), we arrived in Meknes, where we had a hurried bus tour with a few stops at the royal palace and a few other popular spots. I have some awesome pictures from this, but we really didn’t get much of an experience of the city because we were so pressed for time. Therefore we are definitely going back on one of our free weekends.

By noon we were off again, this time to Moulay Idriss, a small mountain village near Meknes. This place was gorgeous. We had lunch there and then passed a few hours on the restaurant’s rooftop terrace, having tea and taking photos. The weather was perfect all weekend, so we had this stunning view of the mountains and the white houses of Moulay Idriss sprawled up and down the slopes, plus sunlight and warmth. Pure bliss. After that we loaded onto the bus (again) and went to nearby Volubilis, an ancient Roman site. It is this enormous ancient Roman city that is fairly well preserved considering its age. We had a several-hour-long guided tour of the entire area. It was exactly what I would have imagined in terms of visiting ancient Roman ruins. We got to sit in ancient hot tubs, walk around the monstrous pillars of what was once a basilica, see the residential neighborhoods, etc. The downside of this was the disgusting bathrooms that we all wound up having to use, considering they were the only facilities for miles around. (Seriously, it’s incredible how much time we spend discussing bathrooms and showers here. You would not think that so many conversations could spring from these basic topics, but relieving and bathing yourself tend to be adventures here.)

Then we headed to Fes. What can I say about Fes...it is ridiculous. Molly studied there last semester, and it must have been a difficult place to live. Awesome to visit, and I would love to go back, but Rabat is definitely a more livable city. One important thing to know about Fes is that it has a beyond intense medina. Side streets barely wide enough for one person to walk through, let alone overloaded donkeys and strawberry carts. Fes is a major tourist destination, too, so the shopkeepers are all over you at every turn. They speak pretty good English compared to the vendors in Rabat, and they consistently try to convince you to pay about ten times whatever they are selling is worth. (Luckily I have learned how to say “I am a student, I have no money” in Arabic, which usually makes them laugh and helps with bartering.)

So yeah, Saturday night was pretty laid-back. We had a formal dinner at a restaurant in Fes's Ville Nouvelle (new town), so everyone got dressed up and we split some bottles of wine and watched Berber musicians, belly dancers, and a creepy Moroccan magician. He dragged one of the girls from our program onto the stage and then pretended he was going to pull a snake out of her shirt. He freaked her out more than was probably acceptable and, on top of that, failed to deliver, so we were in a huff over him. Sunday was exploration day, so we spent pretty much the entire morning and afternoon wandering the medina. We saw the tanneries and visited a family business where they were weaving and selling the most beautiful scarves (I bought one), were harassed by any number of men and street children, worked hard on our navigational skills, and had another bathroom experience too disgusting to go into. Eventually we wound up at a café just outside the medina, people-watching. Some French tourists took pictures of us, which we found very funny, but they didn’t seem to understand when we pointed out that we were American and not really part of the local scene. So perhaps there are now photos of me out there that claim me as a Moroccan.

Also, we stayed in a reallllly nice hotel. Actual beds, a shower that always reached at least room temperature, and a balcony overlooking Fes. It was a little difficult to come back to Moroccan family life after that.

And there you have my weekend. Now it’s back to home stay and classes, but I am determined to travel every possible weekend from hereon out, because I had a purely wonderful time. We have a lot of planned excursions, but also several weekends when we can do whatever we like. Every Moroccan city seems to have a pretty distinct personality, and I’m excited to get around more.