Round trip in Morocco
Some pictures from an intensive and content-rich tour in Morocco in November 2015.
Inga-Lill and I took a bus with a small group of 13 people with mainly the old royal cities in central Morocco as our destination.
No special time was set aside for photography, so you had to take the opportunity to improvise when given the possibility.
These are the different places we visited:
Casablanca
We flew to Marrakech, but went straight on to the legendary city of Casablanca. 15 degrees and rain was not what we had expected, but it had to go!
In any case, the rain made it possible to have nice reflections in the streets and objects.
It was low season, so apparently it was pretty empty of tourists.
The Hassan II Mosque is a must when in Casablanca. A huge boast, the world's second largest mosque and the world's tallest, 210 m, minaret.
Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca
The mosque holds 25,000 servants indoors!
The people in the picture give an idea of the size.
Discount
We went on to the capital Rabat and Mohammed V's mausoleum.
Fez
Next, a little longer, stop was in the oldest of Morocco's royal cities Fez, Morocco's capital of arts and crafts
Here we made a very interesting visit to a factory where ceramics are produced according to ancient methods.
Fruits and vegetables were grown and eaten a lot. Here come the pomegranates ..
A tour of the Fez medina is exciting. There are 9,000 small streets and alleys to get lost in.
According to Islam, people (or animals) must not be depicted, so all decorations of houses and facades consist of geometric patterns - circles, squares, lines, triangles or the like.
The pictures below are from a restaurant (!) where we had lunch in Fez. The last one is on a portion of couscous, which is a whole dish in Morocco with meat, vegetables and, of course, couscous.
Here come another bunch of street pictures from the medina in Fez - the most exciting place on the whole trip!
From the hotel the last night in Fez
Volubilis
Between Fez and Meknes lies the ancient Roman capital of North Africa, Volubilis. The place is a World Heritage site and it was strange that we had not heard of it before. A huge area with ancient Roman ruins!
Area guide and caretaker
Meknes
We stayed for a while in Meknes, the third royal city, which was the capital in the late 17th century.
The impressive Bab Mansour gate in the 25 km long wall around the medina.
The meat in the market actually looked unexpectedly fresh.
Such markets with goods of all kinds were everywhere!
Afourer and Ouzud
The trip was mostly to the Moroccan big cities, but one day we spent on the edge of the Atlas Mountains. Overnight at a nice little hotel in Afourer and then a visit to Morocco's largest waterfall, Ouzud.
Morocco has two national dishes - couscous (as pictured above) and tagine. Tagine is a pot that is cooked in special vessels of clay and contains meat and vegetables with different strong spices.
On the way from the Atlas Mountains to Marrakech, we stopped and looked at olive oil production in a small family business.
Marrakech
It was clear that Marrakech is a bigger tourist destination than the other cities we visited. Still, there was no crowding at the sights as it was low season.
First some pictures from the alleyways in the medina.
The Saadian burial ground contains 66 graves with a sultan from the 16th century and his descendants. The graves are erected in cedar and were first discovered in 1917.
Ahmed al-Mansur's grave
Angel's Trumpet, model larger, and its gardener at the graveyard
Such a hand could be seen on some doors. It is a Muslim symbol of divine protection from evil and is also considered to be lucky and used to keep evil away from home.
Jardin Majorelle, where Yves Saint Laurent's memorial site is located. He lived here for a while and the place is now made into a botanical garden.
On November 6, the day of West Sahara was celebrated,
Last day it got to be fast food and then it was a stop for this trip!
