Casablanca, Meknes & Chefchaouen, Morocco

Wow! We have been in Morocco for two days and it is fantastic! After an early morning departure from the Azores, we hopped through Lisbon and boarded a sad looking prop plane, no doubt the flagship of Royal Air Moroc, and on to Casablanca. Everything was fairly seemless, aside from the fact the international arrival terminal at the Lisbon airport is in central Spain and required an 87 mile walk to immigration. We also sadly experienced a massive toothpaste hemorrage somewhere over the Mediteranian, so now we’ll be forced to try one of the weird local flavors (tamerand, mmmmmm). I realize we’ re only one more confiscated tube of toothpaste away from world peace, but I wish airport security around the world would recognize it’s not just terrorists who enjoy brushing their teeth and we can resume packing it in our pressurized carry-on.
We spent the first night in Casablanca, which is, pretty much like they say, a big city. We stayed in a nice little enclave on the Atlantic coast. We arrived in the afternoon after flying through Lisbon and just in time for rush hour traffic. We managed to still get in a walk along the boardwalk and a very Moroccan dinner complete with belly dancing. We met a nice couple fromToronto at dinner and stayed up too late discussing our travels. Yesterday morning we braved the Casablanca roads again, heading out to the country. Driving is not so bad, you just need to dismiss every preconceived notion about lane occupation, right-of-way, or, utimately, physics. The biggest worry is hitting a not infrequent axel sollowing pothole at 120/kph on one of the country roads, which would no doubt be curtins for the little Peugeot. So far, so good, a four -hour car trip brought us to Meknes, which was the Moroccan capital back in the early 19th century. The medina (city center) was a bit daunting but we found a guide (or rather, a guide found us) to shepherd us through the narrrow, twisting streets and were delighted with the culture, which seemed ageless…this was a real working city, streets like venice without the canals but the bustle of everyday life, men working in shops, welding, painting, baking…children in schools saying their lessons out loud, and women going to and fro, getting things done. The biggest issue is that everything is so alluringly twisty and narrow that it’s actually hard to see anything. We’re having the wonders of the 500 year old mosque we’re standing in front of explained to us, and all we can see is the off-white (albei aged) wall two inchs in front of us. Primarily Muslim, most women here wear the head scarf, but enough young ladies and various older woman without scarves, that you don’t feel like a social pariah without. Our tour ultimately ended at a rug shop, but they had a special way of weaving historical stories into the pitch, that we did not feel like our time had been wasted. they tried not to be too disappointed when we opted out of a rug purchase…..
The riad (This is the Moroccon version of a B&B) that we stayed in was lovely and we had a wonderful Moroccon dinner including various Moroccon salads, cous cous and lamb. The riad had a roof deck and we watched the sun setting over the old city walls…delightful!

Today we drove through the beautiful Moroccon countryside with olive trees everywhere to the astonishing village of Chefchaouen. The most striking thing about Chefchaouen is that, well, it’s blue. While most towns here tend toward the grubby white stucco with terra cotta tile, in a clear why-be-normal moment, everyone here decided blue was the way to go (I woud have loved to be at that town meeting). The base of most buidings are a deep, bluish purple, which gradually (fades?) to ligher blues at the top. To top it off, the whole town is terraced on the side of a mountain, revealing the effect across the entire city at once (the mountain backdrop isn’t bad either).
Here we were also able to visit our first Kasbah (and yes, we did rock it, no matter what Sharif thought). The kasbah was actually an old fort built circa 1550 to repel the Portugese (I don’t know why, we thought they were a nice people). The tops of the towers afforded nice views of the city and opposite valley and the bottom rooms held a museum with everything from random, ancient woodwork, traditional ceremonial dress to a prison (it was a two room suite, but then, you probably had to share).