I love traveling solo so I can do what I want whenever I want to. I also greatly enjoy the research and planning portion of a trip, learning about the country I am visiting, and getting excited when plans come together. When I see those poor tourists on a bus being shuffled around like cattle, I roll my eyes and express gratitude I am not among them. So then how did I become one of them?? Easy, send me an email about Gate 1 Travel’s “8 Day Affordable Morocco” for $999 including flights, hotels, transportation, some meals and tours 10 months out and I’ll say YES! This is exactly what my cousin did in January 2017 and along with her and 2 of her friends, we enjoyed Morocco at the end of November 2017.
On the heels of my trip to Greece which I put a lot of effort into planning (well worth it), I was happy to not have to put any time into researching for Morocco, just pack and show up. I did have less control over this trip, like my ridiculously early departure or long layover, so there are pluses and minuses of course to traveling this way. I also went into the week with little knowledge of the culture and no expectations, which was quickly made up for by the thorough paperwork and tour guides. Despite warning from the website and friend who had done this trip, I still didn’t properly anticipate the fast pace as the 8 days amounted to only 5 full days touring the western portion of the country with 6 nights in 4 different hotels including Rabat, Fes, Marrakech, and Casablanca . We were up very early for a full day of touring or traveling every day so by the end I was feeling pretty beat. This tour did not include some majorly awesome areas of the country like the Sahara Desert or Chefchaouen, Morocco’s Blue Pearl. In hindsight, I would still have done this tour as an inexpensive introduction but easily could have tacked on another week to relax and see more of the country. For more know before you go info, check out my previous blog post "Hammam and Other Moroccan Surprises."
We departed on a Thursday evening and arrived in Casablanca via Paris on Friday afternoon for immediate transport to Rabat about 2 hours away, 2 of the 8 days down. We had a welcome dinner at Hotel Belere with local wine and amazing couscous (caramelized onions and white raisins on top, one of my favorites the whole week) followed by an informational meeting where I was too tired to pay attention. The next morning following the early wakeup call arranged by the tour company and included breakfast buffet crowded with other groups, we checked out of the hotel and began touring Rabat, the current capital of Morocco since 1912. This was done by bus with assigned seating (which would rotate over the week) with stops at 4 locations in Rabat before heading to Fes with some more stops on the way. We wore Gate 1 lanyards and name tags along with a Whisper device to hear the guide without him yelling or needing to be very close, like a target for the street vendors just in case our tourist status wasn’t obvious enough.
Our first stop in Rabat was to see the exterior of the Royal Palace, though the king is considered nomadic moving all around the country, and this site is mainly used for administrative and diplomatic purposes. Next, we went to see the ancient ruins of Chellah (meaning Holy Necropolis, ie dead people) with impressive mosque minaret and surrounding gardens including annual Jazz Festival stage and fertility pool where local women pay homage in the hopes of successful childbearing. The area was inhabited by many cats (the fertility practices must be working) and the protected and revered large storks (again with the babies) in their high nests. Next we were off to Hassan Tower, a 12th century mosque and minaret project destined to be the largest in the world at that time but left uncompleted, and site of the mausoleum of King Mohammed V, the only location in Morocco where you are allowed to take photographs with the guards. Our 4th and final stop in Rabat was a walk through the Kasbah (Citadel) Oudaya or Udayas or any number of alternate spellings along the Bou Regreg river. The beautiful white and blue walls (blue wards off evil and mosquitos, so same thing) lining the small pathways was very reminiscent of Greece. After stopping at a waterfront restaurant to enjoy the views, the visit culminated in the Andalusian style gardens complete with many more stray kittens and artist sketching the arched doorways, an idyllic and serene setting minus the many tour groups.
We continued our 2 hour drive to Fes with much more info over the bus microphone than I could ever remember (so I took frazzled notes despite propensity for carsickness--nerd alert). We learned about the original Berber or Amazigh settlers followed by the Jews after the destruction of the temple (and much later Spanish Pogroms), then the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and most recently the Spanish and French. We got to see modern changes like the $140 million USD Grand Theater under construction in Rabat designed by world renowned (and recently deceased) Iraqi female architect Zaha Hadid. Our tour manager Sninat loved to talk (which is good because it’s part of his job but bad for anyone trying to nap off the jet lag), so discussions continued onto funeral and mourning practices, the well-liked current King Muhammed VI, the Mellach Jewish quarters named for their original success in the salt trade, legal and illegal Hashish and other drugs, and the up and coming valuable prickly pear oil trade. We stopped for lunch in Meknes, one of the 4 Imperial cities/former capitals of Morocco, at a chain called La Grillardiere where I greatly enjoyed my inexpensive huge vegetarian pizza.
After lunch, we paused to learn about and take photos of Moulay Idriss, a local pilgrimage site named for the great-great-great grandson of Muslim Prophet Muhammad and father of Moroccan Islam. Our final stop was a walking tour (about 1.5 hours, I think I audibly groaned at that info) around the archeologic site of the ancient Roman city of Volubilis. We were greeted by our excellent guide Maximus and a lively alleged festival for national olive oil day which I would bet is an everyday sell souvenirs to the tourists occurrence as I can find no record of such a day in November online. The views from this area were absolutely stunning with fields of crops extending out to the mountains in the distance, and it’s no surprise the region is known for olive trees, grape vines, and their delicious end products. The ruins were left in amazing condition with the pure opulence of the Romans on display in the huge homes including mosaic detail, multiple temperature spa baths, and even vomitorium areas to make room for more food and drink (though this is a highly debatable fact of Roman culture, our guide argued for its existence in the dental records of the skeletal remains found though I would speculate all dental hygiene was questionable back then.) The mosaic designs on the floors of homes indicate what the room was used for such as dolphins for fertility in a bedroom or Dionysus, Roman God of Wine and all things debaucherous, in a dining room. Portions of grand public structure remain intact such as the Basilica used as governmental and judicial center, Capitoline Temple for civic and religious purposes, the public fountain as a shared water source and washing area, and the Arch of Caracalla honoring the 22nd Roman emperor who was notably of North African descent. We concluded the tour in the brothel with large (note not to any scale I’ve ever seen) phallic sculpture, but the pictures of women for the Roman soldiers to choose from were removed during Christian occupation. The Roman settlement which peaked at 20,000 inhabitants in the 2nd century, fell to local tribes in the 3rd century but remained inhabited for another 700 years by Latin Christians and then Muslims until abandonment in the 11th century and final demise following an 18th century earthquake and subsequent looting of the stones for new buildings in Meknes.
We finally reached our destination of Fes in the dark with a quick drive around the city for orientation and restaurant recommendations. Let me reiterate, all of the above was done in JUST ONE DAY! As I was exhausted then experiencing it, I’m as tired now of writing about it as you are of reading it (even my parents say my blogs are too long and they’re retired), so I will continue with the rest of the trip and my final thoughts on traveling in a tour group and specifically this Gate 1 Travel tour in my next blog!