We left the hotel at 8:00 for a two hour bus ride to Volubilis, which is a 2,000 year old Roman city that is being excavated.
Walking around the city was fascinating. They have excavated a lot of rooms, pillars, aqueducts, temples, etc..
There was even a vomitorium where people went to purge so they could eat more. There were a lot of mosaics on the floors that were in good shape, especially considering they had survived 2,000 years and an earthquake that leveled the town in the 1700s.
It was fun to imagine the city in its prime with Romans walking around, and thinking how great it was that we were actually able to see it.
We spent around two hours there with a very knowledgeable guide.
We then went to lunch in Moulay Idriss, a poor Moroccan town off the beaten path. We had a buffet lunch at Scorpion House, which is also where the restaurant owner lives. It was a very long and steep climb to get to the restaurant from where the bus dropped us off, so we worked up an appetite getting there. The food and the view were great.
After eating we listened to a professor talk about women’s issues in Morocco. Here is Barbara’s description of the talk:
At the private home where we ate lunch we had a lecture by a female college professor. She spoke about the role of women in Morocco. Morocco is a society based on the patriarchy. Women have been second class citizens & the reason the men use is due to the fact that they are unclean due to menstruation, along with religious reasons & the traditional role of women as mothers. The professor teaches gender studies & slightly more than half of the university students are women. Most rural women are illiterate & are kept as second class citizens due to this fact. Women in the cities can work to earn their own money & this gives them power. There are women in government & professions. There is free public education but it is difficult for rural women to physically get to school so most don’t attend. Thing are improving for women just not for all women. There was a question about the GLBT community (not by us) & she said they have always openly existed in Morocco which practices “Islam lite”. It sounds similar to the states although there is no legal gay marriage. It was a very interesting lecture.
We then had a long bus ride back to Fez. There was an optional tour of a cooperative where they create ceramics and tiles, which we decided to do even though it had been a long day. It was interesting to see how they made ceramics using the same extremely labor intensive techniques they have been using for hundreds of years. For example, they individually chisel the small mosaic pieces even when they are non-symmetrical shapes. Barbara got to try her hand at the spinning wheel, which was fun.
Of course, there was large store selling their products after the tour.
We bought some small candy dishes to be used for candy and nuts during Mah Jong and canasta games.
We had 7:00 reservations for dinner. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 7:20, so we were late (I’m good at math). Fortunately we were eating at a hotel restaurant so we just made a quick stop to our room and then went to the French restaurant. We both had sea bass. We had a desert called “The Lime”, which had very green white chocolate on the outside and lime mousse on the inside. It was all very good.
After dinner we went back to the room to pack for the drive to Casablanca tomorrow. This was another great day.
Jim and Barbara's Travel Journal 