Meanwhile, here in Morocco…
We’ve been in Morocco for four days now, and since I’ve just found what will undoubtedly turn out to be the fastest computer in Africa, it’s about time I caught up with my blog (two new posts below!) and my photos.
We flew into Casablanca, which is Morocco’s largest city but not among its most interesting places (sorry Khalid!). The main attraction is the new-ish (1993) Hassan II mosque that is the third largest in the world and the largest outside Saudi Arabia. It’s certainly huge and the craftsmanship is impressive, but I prefer my mosques older, and if there’s a stork’s nest on top of the minaret, all the better (this will probably make more sense in a few paragraphs).
We spent the next couple of days in Rabat, which is the country’s capital but a city that is often skipped by travellers (if we only had two or three weeks in Morocco instead of four we would have surely bypassed it, too). This is a shame as it’s actually really interesting, more so than I had expected. The medina (old city) is not as fascinating as some other cities in Morocco, but still there are four different walled areas in and around town: the medina itself; the Kasbah, the oldest part of the city that dates from the 12th century; Sale, a separate walled city 15 minutes or so walk from Rabat; and another suburb, Chellah, which was the most interesting of all. In the 13th century, an Islamic complex and necropolis was built over the existing Roman ruins site, leading to a fascinating mix of styles. These days, storks have completely taken over the complex, and nest on every tree, on top of some of the tombs and on top of the minaret of the 700-year-old mosque. In all, it’s a wonderful atmosphere, and this place has been the highlight of our short stay in Morocco so far.
This morning we took the train from Rabat to Meknes (an underrated aspect of Morocco: train travel, which I’ve missed a lot since India). It seems the King of Morocco also chose today to visit Meknes, so that dominated life in the city today, and we got to see him very close up as his motorcade drove by. Beyond that, Meknes is the third of the four imperial cities of Morocco. By coincidence, it will work out that we will visit the four cities in order of ‘worst’ to ‘best’, according to reputation: Rabat, Meknes, Fes, Marrakesh. The labyrinth, yellow medina of Meknes is a great place to wander and soak up Morocco, and it makes Meknes a very likeable city.
The only negative so far is that it’s pretty cold here, being winter and all (in three months’ time, when it’s 45 degrees Celcius in Niger, remind me that I said I was cold in Morocco). The low temperatures – it was a high of about 13 degrees Celcius in Meknes today – don’t bother me much, but taking photos in overcast weather is my biggest pet hate of travel. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds a few times a day, which is typically followed by me sprinting from wherever we are back to the 12th/13th/14th century mosque/gate/tomb that we were at five minutes before to take another photo, followed by me eagerly showing Wendy (once she catches up) the difference between the nice photo with sun on the subject and the dull one without, in the hope that she will one day understand my lunacy and general obsession with blue sky. So far, this method is working quite well, as you can see…
Speaking of which, I’ve put up a few photos of Morocco and more of Oman (including the bee hives!) onto Flickr here.
Tags: Africa, Casablanca, Morocco, Rabat, Travel
Nick