Catching Up: Sunday, January 25

We left the hotel to grab breakfast around 8:30, finding a little café where we ordered a traditional breakfast of bread with oil (they really, really like oil) and cheese with a pot of tea each. We went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and went to the train station to catch the 9:35 to Rabat. This time the car we got on had a center aisle, so we got our own row. The train filled up, and ended up leaving twenty minutes late.

The trip took us through the fringes of Casablanca before heading along the coast past small towns. I wrote (finally fleshing out the notes I have been keeping on the trip), which clearly intrigued some of the younger passengers on the train. Tim says most people don’t have computers, so a tablet was probably quite a sight to see.

The trip took us past new developments which are springing up, and settlements (looking much like favelas), where there was clearly abject poverty (basically cinderblock or corrugated metal shanties with no roofs. The new towers, located outside a city but on the train line, seemed to start at 480,000 dirham – so just under $50,000.

Once in Rabat, where Tim has been living and studying, we grabbed a taxi, taking it to the wall of the medina. The Rabat medina is much cleaner than the Marrakesh one and much less chaotic, probably because there aren’t many places cars can even fit in it! We walked through the medina and found our (very nice) ryad, where we were greeted with tea and cookies while we checked in.

After we had settled into our (gorgeous) room, just off the courtyard, we headed out toward the coast to visit the Kasbah Des Oudayas. We wandered around the gardens of the Kasbah and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean from a large terrace before walking back into the walls of the media and doing a bit of shopping at the souk along Rue des Consul. Much less touristy than Marrakech, it was a much more pleasant experience, with a lot less haggling required. I got a belt made of leather from the area, and the guy sized it to fit me.

We grabbed bread for lunch and fried doughnuts, dirham doughnuts as Tim calls them (as they cost a dirham), which were hot and delicious. As we ate we began a walk to the sites of Rabat, starting at the Hassan Tower, the never-completed minaret of a mosque and the Hassan II Mausoleum, where the former king is interred. The minaret was supposed to be the tallest in the world, but an earthquake struck during construction, taking off about half of the already completed 2/3s of the tower. Taking it as a sign from Allah, they stopped construction of both the minaret and mosque. The only portion of the mosque which was erected were the rows of columns which were to support the roof. The marble pillars had been taken from the ruins of Chellah, a Carthaginian city which had stood a mile or so up-river from the site of the mosque.

Our next stop were the ruins of Chellah. As we walked along the road above the valley where the river runs, we passed the consulates and homes of ambassadors. Chellah, a walled fortress-like city looking out over the river valley, was absolutely beautiful. Adding to the architecture that remained, storks roosted on the ruined towers and tops of arches.

On the walk back to the medina, we decided to go see the Royal Palace. It took three attempts at three different gates (and a lot of walking) to finally get into the compound, and Tim warned me not to take pictures because he had heard that people sometimes had their cameras confiscated. The palace was nice, large and new looking.

After the palace we went to grab some tea in the modern area of Rabat in a place Tim calls “the Pit” (a large sunken plaza with a few cafes). From tea, we headed back to the medina, passing St. Peter’s Cathedral along the way.

In the medina I grabbed some street food, a sandwich filled with liver, sausage and onions (not my favorite meal) and we wandered a bit. Before heading back to the hotel, we went back outside the medina and walked along the riverwalk a bit, but called it an early night as I had to leave for the airport very early the next morning.