04-05/07/2019: Rabat
Km travelled today/sum: 110km /7958km
Sun shine, 24 degrees, highway
We talked to the person at reception and he suggested that the coastal road to Rabat wouldn’t go along the coast. So we decided to take the highway. We had found a nice place and pre-booked near Rabat. We arrived at our accommodation within no time at all. Our host let us in and we had a look around the property.
The view down the valley was really nice and our room as well.
Our host gave us a long list of things to do, so we decided to have a look at some of them the next day. First we visited ‘Chella’, which is a medieval fortified Muslim necropolis. This place has been a trading emporium from the Phoenicians before the Romans came and established a colony here and so on.
So we parked our bike in front of the city wall and entered through the main gate. At the lower site of the rampart were the ruins.
Below is the view from the ruins of a temple. On the right, there is the ruins of the temple and at the lower part are the leftover of the shops, which were below the temple. These are from the roman times.
From here we hopped onto the bike and went to the ‘Mausoleum of Hassan V’.
On each door stands a guard, and they don’t mind to have their picture taken with them – if my arabic serves me right J
Opposite the mausoleum is the ‘Hassan Tower’. This was an attempt in 1195 to build in tallest minaret and mosque in the world. But when the Caliph who instigated this died, nobody was completing the started work and so it remained unfinished. The minaret is only half the high it should have and only the pillar of the mosque are there. Well close to the minaret there is a fountain which was finished as well.
This is part of a small wall that was finished at the front side of the mosque. I was often wondering about the holes in the tall wall around Morocco.It turned out they are holes for rigging. Not sure if they would have stayed open.
After all that running around, we decided to have a look at the Kashbah (old Fortres), which is supposed to be quite relaxing. So we parked the bike in front of the old city wall, not without the semi official parking inspector approaching us and making sure that we know that he is looking after our bike when we are away J
We strolled through the Kashbah down to the river, where we found a nice restaurant. Here we had a Mint Tea (of course with sugar) and watched the people around passing by.
On our way out of the Kashbah, we found a grave yard. For me, it looked extremly crowed.
On our way back, we noticed that Rabat has a new tram system and it was still beeing built in the direction of our accomodation. Talking to our host, he mentioned that there is a technology hub close by and the tram would be extended up to there. Apparently, in three years, there will be about 60000 people working there. During our trip we noticed that there were houses build everywhere, the infrastructure enhanced or developed and the water supply secured. We had to buy bottled water only once or twice, the rest of the time the tap water was drinkable
Back in our accomodation we had a beautiful sunset.
So, that nearly concludes the Morocco section of our trip. Tomorrow we travel to Tanger Med, book the ferry, might have an additional day off and then we are back in Europe.
