Dinner in Fez Uncategorized

Dinner in Fez

Dinner was at a local Riad. Which is a type of bed and breakfast where they serve dinner. Here is a picture of the interior.

We had a Moroccan University professor join us. She told us a lot about the Moroccan culture and the Muslim religion. She also spurred a lot of great conversation. Dinner started with their local soup – Harira.

We then had couscous with lamb.

Then we had chicken.

Dessert was a basket of fruit and some cookies, which seems to be the common dessert.

Fez Uncategorized

Fez

Our tours started at 9:00 am today. The first stop was in the “new” Fez which was built in the 13th century. Here we went to the Jewish quarter and visited a synagogue. We then walked to the royal palace. Fez is one of the four imperial city’s of Morocco. Unlike the UK, we can’t go inside the palace so we took pictures of the outside. As the doors are brass, there were men polishing the doors.

We then headed to the top of a tall hill to get a panoramic view of the three cities of Fez (modern, new and old). For some reason I hadn’t connected the city name with the hat, however, when we got to the top of the hill there were individuals selling the Fez hats. Per Wiki, the hat was named after the city.

From there we went to the old city, which was founded in the 9th century. We first walked to the University of Al-Karaouine and went inside. The mosaic tile, carved wood and decretive stucco was stunning! From here we walked through the many alley ways. Each section is called a souks. The sections represent different things to purchase. They had dresses, cloth, jewelry, meat, fish, produce, leather, rugs, various items made from wood and metal and on and on it went.

We stopped in a house to see the inside and to see the barber rugs. The house was beautiful. Each house has two levels. In the winter they live upstairs as heat rises and in summer they stay downstairs as it is cooler due to the thick walls and tile.

We then went to lunch. Lunch started with appetizers of various small items like hummus, eggplant, carrots, potatoes, some filo stuffed with almonds and cinnamon. The main dish was meatballs in tomato sauce and vegetables cooked in tangines. The tangine is the pot the food is cooked in vs what is inside of it.

After lunch we continued our walking tour. Starting with a tannery. They gave us mint to smell as we heard about the process and saw them tanning the hides. They sold some beautiful jackets! They also had bags, shoes, wallets and belts.

We then went to a fabric store where men were weaving with a horizontal loom. The rugs we saw were created by women using a vertical loom. Strange that men and women make different items with different tools yet every one uses the same bathroom. Anyway, I digress… at the fabric store they had scarves, table cloths and table runners. Some of the pieces were large enough to use as a bed spread. As I looked at the beautiful bedspread, I could see Porter digging the beautiful fabric in a ball so he could lay in it. So no fabric for me.😊

Our last stop of the day was at a pottery store. They showed us the intricate process of making the tangine clay pots and mosaic tables as well as painting the various pottery pieces. It is a true art. For the tables, one person draws out each mosaic piece on a tile and then rough cuts them with a hand chisel. Another person then finishes the pieces and the third person then assembles the small pieces for the table top upside down. He can’t even see what it looks like until he has laid out all the pieces and poured the concrete on the back of the pieces to finish the table. Once it is all dry, then it is flipped over to show the design. Crazy! They also had various bowls, plates, cups, etc that individuals were painting by hand.

Here are some pictures from the day.

Jewish quarter synagogue royal palace shoes!

Blacksmith

Fez

Tannery

Lunch

Mosaic/ ceramics store

Casablanca Uncategorized

Casablanca

Our first stop on the tour today was to take a picture of Rick’s cafe. The cafe was opened on March 1, 2004 by an American woman who was working at the consulate. It was designed to recreate the bar made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the 1942 movie classic Casablanca.

Our next stop was the Hassan II Mosque. It is very large, beautiful and ornate. Inside it can hold 20,000 men and 5,000 women (I guess they cannot pray together as the women’s area was up one level) and outside can hold another 80,000 people. It was built from 1986 – 1993 and is 2/3 over the Atlantic Ocean. I believe our guide said there were over 10,000 craftsmen and artists that worked on it and the cost to build was over $800 million. The king originally planned to pay to build the mosque, however, the large cost made it impossible. Instead they took donations. Both Moroccans and other countries contributed. The mosque was designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau who had lived in Morocco. All of the materials used in the construction, were extracted from Morocco, with the exception of some Italian white granite columns and the glass chandeliers which came from Italy. There is a retractable roof, although it is not used very often and the mosque’s minaret is the tallest religious structure in the world. It is the only mosque in Morocco where non Muslims can enter.

As there is not much else for tourists to do in Casablanca, we headed out to Fes which is about a 4 hour drive. The terrain is very similar to California with its rolling hills and agriculture. On the way to Fez we stopped in Meknes (one of four imperial cities in Morocco) for lunch. One of the guys in our group ordered the chicken. When he got it, the chicken was cut up with the sauce poured on top, however, for all of the women who ordered the chicken, we had to cut our own chicken and pour our own sauce. Interesting.

After lunch we drove into the old city to see a market. Meknes is an agricultural city. Besides wheat, they grow grapes and olives. We also visited a UNESCO World heritage site – Al Machouar Stinia which was built in the 17th century by the powerful sultan Moulay Ismal to rival, Louis XIV of France. Very impressive. Then it was back in the bus for our drive to Fez.