Rabat

The next day I went with SAS to Rabat, the capital city! We rode a nice air conditioned bus for 1.5 hrs to the city and stopped at the royal palace first. Actually, we parked in front of a mosque right next to the palace to use the bathroom, which had neither toilet paper nor soap. Good thing I brought Kleenex and hand sanitizer. The palace looked pretty cool from the outside but no one is allowed inside (even Moroccans) so they have very limited info on what is actually inside. Then we went to a roman ruin nearby, which had this huge original wall closing it off. It had two parts inside, one roman and one muslim. There were some gardens and even a sacred pool where the used to store sacred eels to cure infertility (I think that was it, it was for women). Then we went to lunch and I tried a traditional Moroccan meal called tangine, where you have a bowl with a pointed cover over it and you cook all the food you want inside it. It was excellent! Afterwards we went to the mausoleum housing the coffins of Hussein II, his father and brother. It was also very ornate like the mosque, but on a much smaller scale (the mosque is 2x as tall as anything on the Casablanca skyline). There was also an unfinished mosque nearby, the architect died before completing it and the blueprints were destroyed so they couldn’t finish it. Then we went through an old part of the city and stopped in the square to use the bathroom. Not a good idea, all the girls were attacked by women doodling henna on their hands and arms – even pulling a Lifelong learner’s sleeve up (they’re older students) and doodling on a guy’s arm! Once we finally got away from them, it was time to go back to the ship.