Chefchaouen to Fes

 Wednesday, March 11

I have found the sweet spot on the bus: it’s the raised area above the rear wheels, where I’m high enough to see out the front windshield, but not so high that my view out the side is shortened, like in the back row. Seems we’ve all settled into our favoured places now, five of us spread out in a van that can hold sixteen. Pretty nice!

Luxury Van

We wound back down the mountain to the fertile plains below. We saw sheep with their shepherds, cows with their watchers. We saw onions, barley, wheat, sugar beets growing. We saw loaded donkey carts bringing grass home to the cows. We saw a local town market, we saw school kids running to or from their bus, and we saw garbage everywhere.

We stopped for a walking tour (so. many. walking. tours.) through Volubilis, a Roman ruined city in the middle of the plain. I thought it was a strange place for the Romans to choose, but it was the exceptional fertility of the land that enticed them, it seems, in addition to its strategic position and abundant supply of water. In it’s heyday, it was a major producer of olive oil and grains for the empire, housing more than 20,000 people. Much of the structure was destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and some of it has been reconstructed. There is not a whole lot to see, but it was good to stretch the legs, and I do love imagining places like this as living cities. 

An extension of the Appian Way

One of few standing structures

Twisted column (rare), twisted sisters (just as rare)

There was a single souvenir shop outside the site, and I bought a hat to replace the one that decided to stay behind in the riad in Marrakech. Gotta have a hat in Morocco. 

The new hat. It's crushable, and fits my colour scheme! And I had fun bargaining for it.

From Volubilis, we drove an hour or so to Meknes, one of a series of Imperial cities in Morocco, along with Rabat, Fes, and Marrakech. We had a (nother!) walking tour, this one of the medina and of a mausoleum. I think it was a mausoleum; I’m starting to lose track. Our lunch stop, deep in the medina, was a hole-in-the-wall place that serves only camel burgers. Some of us were more successful at enjoying them than others. The meat in mine was very rare, but I assured it was safe to eat. It was really nicely spiced. Probably won’t ever eat another one.

Pretending to enjoy camel burgers

 

Shadows in the medina of Meknes

Our guide was a very sweet young woman with good stories to spark up the history she was required to tell us. And which I can no longer remember. I’m really looking forward to the mountain and desert part of this trip, away from so much…education!

After Meknes, we drove yet some more, into Fes. I was in Fes all those years ago, and again don’t remember much, and certainly not the magnificence of this city, surrounded by I-don’t-know-how-many-kilometres of walls. Because we were in the van, I couldn’t get any decent shots of the place, the caramel walls riding the hillside, the fortress on the hill. You’ll just have to go there. 

We checked into our riad, a place about three cuts above anything I’ve ever stayed in before. Rose petals on the bed. Rose petals on the bathmat. Essential oils in a diffuser. Doors direct into the courtyard. A bowl of fruit on the table. Turn-down service. (Turn-down service!!) Everything screamed luxury. These places make me feel small. The men in their black suits all obsequious, I don’t feel “good enough” to be here, tramping in the schlub that I am. I know I know, that’s a dumb way to think, but it’s not about thinking, it’s about how I feel. I like places more homey, with a few flaws, with proprietors who seem like regular human beings. Some people, obviously, love luxury. I am not one of them. Even when I’ve paid for it.

The Maison Bleue in Fez. Our room is the one at the end.

Note rose petals on the bed

Note rose petals on the bath mat

We went for dinner at another private home, but there was no comparison between this home and the one that welcomed us in Casablanca. While that was a middle-class family apartment, this was a mansion — that Mariam said was also middle class. The owner of this huge house — again, built like a riad with a plain wall on the street and open to a garden courtyard in the centre — is a woman about my age who is of, I think, the fifth generation to own it. Chadia is a trained chef, and has groups of people in to her courtyard every evening. We were one of several groups. She serves, after the usual fantastic array of appetizers, a chicken pastilla, an individual filo pie filled with spiced shredded chicken and topped with a dusting of sugar (which we all scraped off). Desert was whole fruit and a few small pastries. Fruit figures into every meal in this country. “Seasonal” right now seems to be apples, oranges, and bananas. 

Dinner at Chadia's

Chadia pouring tea

In the middle of dinner, some musicians came in, beating drums and blowing horns. We got up and danced, along with Chadia, who was beaming and laughing the whole time.

Getting home was a mix of walking and driving. And in the end, despite my proclaimed discomfort with luxury, I slept better than I have in weeks, from 10 pm to 6 am. Maybe I just don’t know myself.