Excursion to Meknes, Fes, Voulbilis, Moulay Idriss...

First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of entries as of lately. This weekend’s excursion, the sunny weather, and this gorgeous city have distracted me from the realities of life…namely my school work, but I feel like that was more intentional.
Secondly, this weekend’s excursion to Meknes, Moulay Idriss, Volubilis, and Fes was incredible. All of these places have fascinating histories, seeing as they were all at one time the capital or the birthplace of a dynasty. For your sake, I’ll spare you the historical details. And before I forget: more pictures have been posted, so check out that link from earlier to get some imagery.
We left early Saturday morning for Meknes where we spent only a few hours touring by both bus and foot. We got to see the famous Bab Mansour, built under the Sultan Moulay Ismail’s tyrannical rule, but not much else. If you want to read about a crazy leader, just google Moulay Ismail. He would arbitrarily kill people or have them killed (+30,000 people, not including those in battle) and his reasoning was that “my subjects are like rats in a basket, and if I do not keep shaking the basket they will gnaw their way through.” Gee, what a pleasant guy. We also visited a few arts and crafts shops and I was really tempted to do a little shopping, but I’ve decided to wait on that for awhile. This is where traditional silver damascene is made (hair-line thin silver thread pressed into grooves on steel to create decorated plates, figurines, etc) and also a lot of embroidery is done…Mom and Dad, you’re lucky I didn’t know the dining room table dimensions because you almost ended up with a new tablecloth (for future reference, what are the dimensions?). Our trip to Meknes was just a drive-by visit, and although I can tell there’s not a whole lot to do, I still plan on coming back to visit because it’s one of those cities that’s great to walk around and explore with no particular agenda. I’m not a big crowd person, and when you compare pictures that I took, you’ll understand why I prefer the often overlooked city of Meknes to the winding maze of Fes. Plus, you can go horseback riding there :)
We drove a short ways to Moulay Idriss for lunch and tea at a private home that was absolutely gorgeous. The town itself is quaint, but I can’t really see myself spending much time there. Maybe it was the time of day we showed up (smaller towns still take full advantage of the traditional siesta), but I wasn’t too impressed with the place, besides the gorgeous views of the Middle Atlas Mountains.
Volubilis was next on the schedule, and let me tell you…Morocco was the last place that I thought I’d be seeing Roman ruins. The weather was perfect for touring and it ended up being a great walk after our tajine and couscous lunch and terrace tea-time. We had this guide who would just ramble on and on, so after a little while we started to explore on our own, which was perfect because after spending the entire day with everyone in the group we all kind of needed our own space for a bit.
We arrived in Fes that evening just in time to change for our “fancy” dinner at a riad (best described as a Moroccan mansion) with belly dancers, live music, and a creeper magician included. We all ended up getting to bed pretty early that night because we could barely move after they had stuffed us full of olives, bread, couscous, tajine with chicken and lemon, and mint tea.
We took a walking tour of Fes the next morning, which continued on to the afternoon (after yet another amazing meal)…we had to divide into two groups and have two chaperones each because they were so afraid we were going to get lost. They’re probably right because, as our native Fes guide was proud to point out, the medina has over 9,000 “streets”; most of them are so narrow you have to suck in and walk through sideways. Donkeys are everywhere there because cars can’t get through, and they carry everything from bags of sand to Coca-Cola bottles. After successfully emerging from the labyrinth, we had a free afternoon to ourselves so we did some more exploring around our hotel and took a nap before dinner. My roommates and I somehow lucked out and got one of the best rooms in the hotel on the top floor with a patio, so we ended up having most of the group over for a little party later that night, which was the perfect way to end the trip. We returned late Monday morning and I spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep and doing homework and readings that I had put off all weekend. Now it’s back to the books…that is, until this weekend’s adventures. TBA.