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AFRICA 2008
FRANKFURT  |  CASABLANCA  |  ROAD TO FEZ  |  FEZ  |  ROAD TO ERFOUD  |  ONWARD TO OUARZAZATE  |  ROAD TO MARRAKECH  |  MARRAKECH  |  TUNISIA  |  CARTHAGE  |  DOUGGA/BULLA REGIA  |  DUBAI  |  AL MAHA  |  OMAN  |  SALALAH  |  

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ON THE ROAD TO FEZ

Casablanca to Fez is approximately six hours in a car. Since we are scheduled to spend more than a week in Morocco, in order to avoid having most of it taken up by waiting in airports to be flown in one small plane after another, we chose to see the countryside by car.

The countryside around Morocco is much like the landscape of California, and the parts from Casablanca to Fez like southern California. There are the usual similarities of "Mediterranean" vegetation: palms, pines, eucalyptus, acacia and bamboo, but to that mix was added extensive amounts of the nopal ("paddle") cactus and the maguey cactus (from which tequila is made). The latter two plants made it seem like we were also in Mexico.

To break up today's trip we took two side trips. The first was to a City built in the seventeenth century by one of the most extreme of the Moroccan Caliphs. He lived to be eighty, he had five hundred wives and eight hundred children and, because he was not a totally nice man, he had a personal bodyguard of 12,000 men. The city he built, Meknes, was miles away from anywhere and was surrounded by three thick and high walls (to make it harder to get to the Caliph, who never was attacked). An earthquake in the seventeen hundreds (the great Lisbon quake) did what no marauding army could have - it leveled his palace and turned much of the rest of Meknes into rubble. He missed the excitement; he was by then stirring up trouble in the hereafter.

The main gate in Meknes sits nears a plaza that has at its furthest end a mansion long ago owned by a banker and politician. The house is in considerable disrepair, although still quite attractive, and is now a museum. Our Fez hotel is another of the family's palaces but very recently updated (a picture of our room is to the right). In fact, from our balcony we have has a splendid 180 degree view of one of the oldest cities in the Western world.

Our second stop was the largest Roman ruin left in Morocco. It covers many acres and, considering that it wasn't totally leveled after two earthquakes, it's actually in reasonable repair. A real bonus was the discovery of two storks nesting on two columns. Storks are considered very good luck in Morocco. The picture at the right shows both of them but you will have to look hard to find them.

We ate at the hotel tonight and Carol chose the Moroccan restaurant. We cook Moroccan dishes at home, so the food is not all that strange. What is strange, however, is the policy of the restaurant requiring that all of their specialty Moroccan dishes be ordered 24 hours in advance! What an incredibly strange policy for a hotel restaurant that caters to tourists who probably come here only once.

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FRANKFURT  |  CASABLANCA  |  ROAD TO FEZ  |  FEZ  |  ROAD TO ERFOUD  |  ONWARD TO OUARZAZATE  |  ROAD TO MARRAKECH  |  MARRAKECH  |  TUNISIA  |  CARTHAGE  |  DOUGGA/BULLA REGIA  |  DUBAI  |  AL MAHA  |  OMAN  |  SALALAH  |  
HOME  |  AUSTRALIA 2003  |  ACROSS AMERICA  |  IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA  |  VIETNAM  |  AFRICA  |  AROUND THE WORLD 2009  |  SOUTH AMERICA 2009  |  LEGENDARY CULTURES 2011
  |  TURKEY AND GREECE  |  CIRCLE THE ARCTIC