Fez and Volubilis

Volubilis

I got to go to my second Roman ruin site this past weekend, a town called Volubilis nearby in Meknes. This was a massive (and hot...) site. I don't really know much about the history, but it was very interesting to again be able to touch (and in some cases, climb!) on some of the ruins.

Fez

The ride to Fez was not fun. Small, cramped buses with no space for luggage storage, and one of them had no AC. Our hotel was what I have come to expect out of government accommodations, though apparently the group trip to Fez last year had a nice hotel with a pool, etc. Not that we really had time to swim! 

Friday night dinner we went to a little restaurant called Puerto Rico, which had the most absurd mixture of cultural food items I've ever seen. I ended up having a vegetarian pizza with peppers, tomatoes, and onions, and it wasn't too delicious. Went to bed early because oh my god early bedtime is awesome. 

The next day we started out early with a miniature English lecture about the history of Fez and Meknes. Then, I went on the mandatory tour around Fez. It was supposed to be about an hour long and cover the "New Fez" areas of the city (Fez has three basic areas, I think). We ended up walking for four hours in the heat. It was preposterous. I was so pissed, hot, and tired. We thankfully got a bus back from the medina we ended up at. I went to lunch, again at that Puerto Rico, with some friends. The cheese panini I got wasn't cooked all the way through and was a disgusting waste of 30 DH. I feel sick now even just thinking about how gross it was. 

Mosque

There's a beautiful garden oasis in the middle of the hot city

Entrance to the old Medina

I took a well deserved nap after that. The next tour in the afternoon was optional and covered the old medina. I went with the group but I didn't go on the tour, which would have been another three hours of walking through the maze that is the medina. 

Instead I did some of my first shopping! The first purchase I made was a little blue leather (camel?) purse. The guy started at 250, but said he'd give me a good price of 150. I bargained down to 115! 

I also bought these little tajine items, they are two miniature ones stuck together. I didn't really want them, and they really aren't very nice once I finally took a look at them. The shop keeper was very pushy though and tried to sell them to me for 100, I wouldn't budge from 30 and I didn't even really want them. But I kept trying to walk away and he kept asking me what I would pay. Wouldn't budge from 30 and he finally settled on it so I got them. It comes to about $3.50 USD though, so I'm not entirely upset. 

After that, I took another nap, and since I didn't really have lunch I was getting quite the headache. I was tempted to stay in bed but instead decided to explore on my own. I asked the receptionist where I could find a book store. He gave me the name and how to get there and said about a 5 minute walk. Ha. Ha. Ha. I walked for a good 45 minutes turned around every which way to try to find this place that I thought was a bookstore. Nope, it was a freaking super market. To be fair they had some books but they were all in French. I wanted Arabic or English. On the plus side, I did find some tupperware for snacks for school which was super useful. And I do love my tupperware. 

I went to bed early still sometime around 9:30 PM, man was I tired!

The next day we went to some look out with some castle type of thing that was okay, then we were free to roam in the medina from 10:30 am - 2:00 pm! I walked for hours through the medina. Problem is going deeper is all downhill, but when you try to go up you are literally going up at like a 45 degree angle. That sucked, especially cause there's no where to sit in the middle of the medina without being sketchy so I had to keep going in and out. 

I must have walked about an hour in to try to find a large dark blue, flat bottom, zipper top, shoulder bag for my grandmother. I settled on a store I went to twice, and he started at 380DH.I started at 150 maybe. We went back and forth a few times. I took out my wallet, and I had a 100DH, two 50 DH, and a 20DH bill, and some coins. I hid one of the 50 DH bills, and at this point he had settled on 220 DH I think. I showed him the 100, 50, 20 DH bills and some coins, which summed to 185 and said that's all I had. He asked if I could come back, I said no, I had to go to the airport. He took the 185! My resident director says it's probably worth around 300 for a foreigner so I did pretty damn well. In Arabic, no less!

I also got a scarf and some bracelets. On the way out, I wanted to grab lunch before the bus left, and found a cute little french shop that offered harrira soup! Traditional moroccan food, finally! I love soup! It was only 10 DH too, which is a $1.17 USD. Came with plenty of bread and olives too. It was more than filling and entirely delicious. I need to find a place that sells that in Agdal. 

Purchases in hand, we took the long journey back to Rabat!