We left the hotel at 9:00 for the drive to Meknes, a medium-sized town on the way to Casablanca. We first stopped at the granary and horse stables built in the 1600s by Sultan Moulay Ismail.
They are no longer used but at one point the stables held 12,000 pure bred Arabian horses that were used by the king’s army, and the granary held enough grain to feed all of the horses. The scale of the buildings and the thoughtful design was amazing. There is a lot of talk in the United States about income inequality, which I believe is a serious problem, but it is nothing compared to monarchies where the king had (or has) fabulous wealth and everyone else was extremely poor – either slaves or paid sub-poverty wages. Supposedly the people taking care of the horses worked only for food. We don’t know how they paid for their other expenses.
After viewing the granary and stables we walked through the Meknes Medina, which is less hectic than Rabat and Fez, and has a lot more modern goods to sell.
They also had more traditional Moroccan items.
We stopped at a Koranic school where children learned about Islam. The school was closed hundreds of years ago but the building still exists. Children who went there became full-time students for the rest of their lives and spent many years traveling abroad to learn about the world. The school was closed when the French took over Morocco and instituted free public school.
We then walked through the Medina to a restaurant, Riad Bahia, for lunch. The restaurant owner had grown up in the building and came back to restore it and open it as a restaurant. The food was good.
After lunch we got back on the bus for the three hour drive to Casablanca. They showed the movie Casablanca on the way, which was a great movie and made the time go faster. We are staying at The Four Seasons in Casablanca. It is very nice and right on the ocean. We walked along the beach for a while and then went back to the room for dinner.
We had dinner in the restaurant. We are only staying in Casablanca one night so we didn’t really unpack.
Jim and Barbara's Travel Journal 