Each year I asked the listeners of Amateur Traveler to vote on a destination for a small group trip. Let’s ignore for a moment how crazy it is to let strangers or mostly strangers vote on where I spend my vacation.
This year’s trip was the second trip to Morocco. We did this trip with Intrepid Travel. I have previously traveled with Intrepid to China, Cambodia, India, Southern Africa, and southern Morocco. This year’s trip was to Northern Morocco. It was Intrepid’s North Morocco Adventure tour.
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Itinerary
The northern Morocco intrepid tour starts in the city of Casablanca and then travels to Rabat, Meknes, Moulay Idriss, Volubilis, Fez, Chefchaouen, Tangier, and Marakesh.
Casablanca
The Intrepid tour starts in Casablanca, it doesn’t spend any time there. If you want to see Casablanca, you must come in a day or so early. I arrived a day early so that I could see the city. That also gave me a day to play with if something went wrong with my travel arrangements. Much of Casablanca is a modern city, but there is still an old medina in the city as well.
I met up with two of my fellow travelers at the airport, Marcy and Cindy. We had arranged for transportation from the airport with Intrepid. I understand that it’s not that difficult to get from the airport, but after long international flights, seeing someone with a sign with your name on it is a comforting experience.
I had specifically arranged the tour so that it would not overlap with Ramadan when people in the Muslim world fast during the day. My experience is that fasting people can get a bit grumpy. I had not thought through that arriving a day early meant that I actually arrived on the last day of Ramadan so finding restaurants open that evening was a bit more challenging. After a few failed attempts, we found, a restaurant near our tour hotel that was a combination butcher shop and restaurant where we could easily get kebabs. A dinner of kebabs and bread and drinks was seven dollars total for the three of us. Morocco is not an expensive destination.
The next day, we were scheduled to meet with our tour group at dinner. Before then we set out to explore the city of Casablanca. We investigated a local market near our hotel. I love exploring the market where the locals actually shop. We then walked to Rick’s café, which is named after the café from the movie Casablanca. Is an upscale establishment and lunch would have been three times as much per person as our total dinner was the night before so we opted to skip it on this trip.
We grabbed lunch instead at a nearby shopping mall right on the coast in Casablanca. Then we walked along the coast to the largest mosque in Casablanca, the Hassan II Mosque. This is the only mosque in the country where non-Muslims are invited to visit. Sadly, we had not done our homework and did not have reservations for a tour. They were sold out for the day of our visit. The green roof of the mosque is something we would see repeated everywhere we went in Morocco. The green is to remind the faithful of paradise.
We met our tour group and our guide Ayoob at 6 o’clock in the lobby of our hotel, the Hotel Imperial. I passed out tour T-shirts and we did a few quick introductions before heading off to dinner. In a subtle foreshadowing of the walking we would do on this trip, we headed to a restaurant that our guide said was “only a mile away”. Intrepid tours tend to be active.
Rabat
The first morning of the trip we got up early and took taxis to the local train station. Our guide had previously purchased tickets. We boarded a train to the capital of Rabat. Our tour of Rabat was going to be rather Quick so when we arrived, we stored our luggage at a nearby restaurant ordered our lunches, and then headed out to explore the city for about four hours.
We walked a little over a mile from the train station to the Hassan Tower and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V. The Hassan Tower sits in a forest of incomplete columns and what was supposed to be a mosque built near the end of the 12th century. The caliph, who commissioned the mosque, Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, died before it was complete and his son did not see the need to complete the monument started by his father… nor has any ruler since seen the need.
The Mausoleum of Mohammed V is the last resting place of the last Sultan and the first king of Morocco. Mohammed V played a key part in Morocco gaining its independence from France and Spain. he was the grandfather of the current king of Morocco, Mohammed VI. The mausoleum has ceremonial guards and a wonderful view of the coast and of some of the very modern buildings in Rabat such as the Mohammed VI Tower which is the tallest building in Africa.
We walked along the river from the mausoleum to the Kasbah of Rabat which is a walked fortress filled with white-washed buildings. The area was built by Muslim refugees from Spain who fled to Morocco after the Spanish reconquest. The area has great if very windy views of the coast as well as a beautiful garden inside the walls called the Andalusian Gardens.
From the Kasbah, we returned to the restaurant for lunch walking through the old medina of Rabat. The Kasbah and the medina are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. This trip is very focused on these centers of old cities. The tour included a visit to 5 UNESCO sites (sites considered significant to the heritage of the world). Of these, all but one was a medina.
Moulay Idriss
After eating the lunch we had pre-ordered, we took the train from Rabat to Meknes and then jumped in an array of blue cabs (each city has its own cab color) for the drive to Moulay Idriss.
Moulay Idriss is named for Idris I who was a grandson of Mohamad. Idris, I arrived in the area that is now Morocco around 789 AD. He was fleeing Mecca after a failed Shia uprising against the Abbasid Caliphate. Idris I conquered large parts of northern Morocco, brought Islam to the area, and founded the city of Fez. He is often considered the founder of Morocco. Moulay is an honorific that translates to “Our Lord”.
Idris I is buried in a tomb in Moulay Idriss. As it is a mosque, we could only see it from the outside and had to stop at a barrier past which no non-muslim or donkeys could pass.
Moulay Idriss is a small town built on two hills that look down on the Roman ruins of Volubilis. Upon the arrival of Idris I, the mostly Berber inhabitance of Volubilis abandoned the city for the more defensible town of Moulay Idriss.
We stayed in a guest house in Moulay Idriss. Most of the group hiked up the hill to see the sunset over the city.
We also had a presentation after dinner of local music. The presentation was interesting, but we had no translation of what the group was singing about. We could not tell if they were singing the same song over and over again or if, more likely, there is a limited range in the local music. I retired before the rest of the group and apparently missed a dance performance by our guide Ayoob and Jim (one of the more adventurous members of the group).
Volubilis
One of my favorite sites that we saw on the trip was the Roman ruins of Volubilis which is a UNESCO site. This city thrived for at least 700 years and was originally the southwestern corner of the Roman Empire. After being abandoned during the Middle Ages it was damaged by a major earthquake in the middle of the 18th century and was mined for stones to build the city of Meknes. Most of the excavations at the site were done during the time of French rule (1912-1955).
There are not a lot of buildings still standing at the site, except for a triumphal arch and part of a basilica. Our guide was able to point out the layout of the city and several large houses owned by wealthy merchants along the main routes. Numerous mosaic floors have been uncovered.
One of the main reasons that I enjoyed the visit is that the city sits just below Zerhoun mountain on a hill overlooking productive agricultural land. One can easily see why the Romans were attracted to the area. Excavations have shown the remains of occupation going back 5,000 years. We visited in April and the area was covered with wildflowers as much of Northern Morocco was during our visit. Our guide told us that the name Volubilis and the name of his nearby village of Walīlī both come from the local “oleander” plants.
Meknes
We traveled from Volubilis to Meknes via taxis from Volubilis and had a very quick visit. Meknes is an imperial city although it is less well-known than the other three: Fez, Rabat, and Marrakesh. The city was the capital from the late 1600s into the early 1700s. We visited the mausoleum of the longest training, Moroccan sultan Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif.
We then made our way through the twisty streets of the Meknes Medina (a UNESCO site) to an unmarked door. Inside was a cute little restaurant whose specialty was camel burgers. After our lunch, we took the train to Fez where we checked into our hotel.
Fez
In Fez, we stayed in the Nouzha Hotel for two nights. On the first night, we ate at a new French Bistro, Bistrot des Saveurs, which gave us a break from Moroccan food for the evening. The restaurant was across the street from a grocery store. I am apparently not the only one who loves exploring grocery stores when I am visiting a foreign country.
In the morning we started with a visit to the royal palace. We took pictures of the formal gates before walking to the Mellah (the old Jewish Quarter). The city of Fez had a large Jewish population for more than a thousand years, but that number has dropped from 22,000 or so around 1940 to less than 150 today.
We then boarded our van and drove to Borj Sud which is a fortress south of the old medina. The medina of Fez is one of the oldest in the country and is quite large. 70,000 people live in this old part of the city and it is broken into numerous neighborhoods. We had a local guide Meryem…
