Day 3 Part 2 – Volubilis and beyond

Volubilis is pretty cool. One minute you’re driving along, the next there are a bunch of Roman columns and walls rising out of the farmland. We skipped paying for a guide, choosing instead to wander the  streets in search of mosaics. One one level, it’s sad that Roman ruins are just that: ruins. Having previously seen Pompeii, where a lot of the town is still intact, Volubilis was a little bit disappointing in that regard, with few walls standing above waist height, and a lot of the houses quite overgrown. There were sttill some fascinating sites, admiring the stone work on the column tops (L is the one who did ancient history so she knows the proper name for these things).

The mosaics, on the other hand, were pretty cool. A number of the houses had been cleared down to reveal fabulous mosaic designs on the floors, from Venus, to the seasons, to a parody of an acrobat riding a horse backwards — oh those wacky Romans. There were quite a few dolphins, obvious proof that Romans invented new-age wackery. There were lions and bears and elephants, really impressive detail, I really admire the work that must have gone into creating these stunning designs. There was much wow.

Not so wow was my poor dismount off a wall, where I managed to hurt my left knee, so I see some hobbling in my future. Two thoursand year old stone 1, 38 year old cartilage, 0.

Lunch followed, at a tourist trap in Meknes. Here we learnt another lesson in travel, next time we give Adbul better instructions. Given the average meal in Chefchaouen, plus tea and tip could comfortably be covered by 150 dirhams, this place’s 300+ dirhams, not including the tip — the poncy maitre’d was very politely clear that the tip was not counted in the bill, left a 350 dirham bad taste in my mouth. The food was quite good, a salad of lots of yummy vegetable dishes, followed by the obligatory napalm tagine. In this case it almost was napalm, there was a lot of oil, and no stock. We are talking about dishes that made a goodly sized bucket of the Colonel’s best look like a weight watchers meal. L’s lamb was swimming in oil, drowning possibly it was so deep. As neither of us was feeling 100%, we skipped out on dessert to get back on the road. Good food, but incredibly overpriced.

Fes is big. It doesn’t seem to build up the way Australian cities do, one minute you’re driving through farmland, the next there are walls and block houses all around. And along the entire route, livestock graze along the roadway.

Our place in Fez is another riad, tucked away in the medina. This medina is a fair bit bigger, and doesn’t let cars in, so my first mission will be to find a good compression bandage for my knee and there is a bunch of walking ahead. At the riad we’re in the care of Ben, who makes a mean chicken and red courgette tagine, an awesome  bean soup, and really good fried courgettes. Dig that, I seem to even be eating vegetables here. Still, it hasn’t killed me yet.

We also met the owner, Josephine, a lovely woman from Melbourne who seems the mothering type.

Definitely an early night tonight, to rest up and see how things pan out.