Moroccan Finale

Trip Start Aug 05, 2006
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12
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Trip End Ongoing


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Saturday, November 18, 2006

During the rest of my time in Morroco I first traveled north to the city of Fez and then made my way west to Casablanca, stopping at the mountain town of Chefchaouen and at the capital, Rabat. Fez is another popular tourist destination and was the ancient capital of Morocco. The most famous place in Fez is known as the Fez el-Bali. It is a huge medina filled with thousands of twisting alleyways and hundreds of mosques. While exploring this area I decided to hire a guide since after several months traveling I have discovered that I seem to get completely lost wherever I go. This turned out to be a mistake however as my "wonderful" guide only wanted to take me to places like carpet shops and tanneries where you get constantly pestered to buy severely over-priced stuff. I did enjoy walking the streets though and everything in the medina has to be brought in by animals.

After a few days in Fez, like Marrakech, I was a little tired of being constantly pestered by "friends" and took a bus up to Chefchaoen A View of the Rif
A View of the Rif
 . This is a small town located high up in the Rif mountains and was my favorite place to visit in Morocco. It was just so chill here I couldn't believe it was the same country! Only a few people here are bothersome and the scenery is absolutely amazing. Many of the buildings here are painted a beautiful blue color that fits right in with the locals relaxed attitude. It was also very cheap here and I was able to secure a nice room for only $5 a night.

My next stop was Rabat, the capital of Morocco. There was not much to see here because it is mostly a modern city but it is on the coast and has nice wide-open boulevards and shopping centers that almost make you forget you are still in Africa. Since my flight to Egypt didn't leave for a few days I took advantage of the time to enjoy the sunny weather and work on my tan.

Finally I headed to Casablanca to catch a flight to Cairo. This is definitely not the like the place depicted by the movie of the same name. Instead it is a huge urban sprawl that is home to 20% of the country's population. The only place of interest that I saw here is the enormous Hassan II Mosque which can hold tens of thousands of worshippers! Ma' as-salaama Morocco!
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