We got up fairly early, said goodbye to Chris and Daniel and went out to get a taxi to Moulay Idriss which was a short drive away. Moulay Idriss I, of the bloodline of the Prophet Mohammed, is buried there and apparently 5 visits to his mausoleum is equal to a visit to Mecca. All very nice except we we couldn't get anywhere near his tomb because we're not Moslem, rubbish. We did get a look from behind the barrier that keeps all us non-muslims out and it looked beautiful.
Instead to amuse ourselves we climbed up the hill and found the petit terrace which looks back down over the town and out over the surrounding hills and fields, really really beautiful. We carried on and were led up by the mausoleum guard to the grand terrace which was a piece of cobbled pavement outside someone's house with an even better view (you can imagine the scale of the small terrace). W stayed there for a while feeling tired from the long walk up and relaxed in the shade looking out over the town.
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| From Meknes and Volubilis, Morocco |
We saw so many sad donkeys, some of them had wire mesh over their muzzles, patches with no fur, overloaded with all kinds of things, including toothless old men prodding them with sticks and they all looked so miserable. Some of them were in better a condition and were more taken care of but every donkey we saw looked unspeakably sad, I'm no animal rights activist, I think that human welfare should be dealt with first, but it tore at the heart to see these animals being mistreated and/or overworked.
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| From Meknes and Volubilis, Morocco |
We jumped in another collective taxi to Volubilis, an old Roman settlement 5km away from Moulay Idriss, the best kept ruins in Morocco. We wandered round half heartedly, the site was beautiful with some sexy 2000 year old mosaics of fat bottomed girls and plenty of arches and ruins but we were feeling the heat and the relatively upbeat pace of our travelling so we left after an hour and hitched a lift back into town.
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| From Meknes and Volubilis, Morocco |
On the bus to Fes was the loudest and most annoying female I've come across recently. The 45 minute bus trip from Meknes to Fez was the loudest, most annoying and most entertaining that we've been on. It was another old bus without air con but this time we were close to the front and most of the action. Unfortunately all the action was in Arabic so we had no idea what all the fuss was about, there was a young guy in a vest top and sunglasses who brought speakers with him and played loud music for a fair art of the journey, the annoying woman shouted and laughed a lot – she had a voice like a parched donkey – and we also managed to hit something whilst overtaking a car which sent the young boom box man into a rage and he launched into a verbal assault on the driver and had to put back into his seat by the conductor and other passengers.
All was good and well in the end and we arrived in Fes in one piece, just in time to get a hostel room which isn't very pleasant but is quite cheap, and get lost in the Medina.
The Medina in Fez is something worth writing home about and so far we've only seen a small portion of it – on the walk to find a suitably cheap hotel we saw, sheep brains, a camel head (with meat still inside) and live chickens as well as all the other stalls and stands you can expect to find in a market. Things like, leather slippers, shoes, rugs, carpets, dresses, 'sexy' nighties, food stalls, dried fruit and nut sellers and all types of other household necessities which we hadn't seen in the Medina in Marrakesh, it was all amazing and looking at the map, spread far and wide in streets that have been laid out pretty much the same way for the last millennia. After much searching we found a sandwich place and got some spicy meat sandwiches to take away to a cafe where D could watch the match (UK vs US 1-1).
Back to our smelly hotel room with mattresses on the floor to sleep.
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