Gallery of Morocc.

I visitied Morocco with my son Charlie (a law student at Vanderbilt) August 6-13, 2005.  We flew into Casablanca, arriving around 7AM, hopped on a train and, by early afternoon, we were in Fez, Morocco's spiritual capital.  We stayed in the old medina, which dates back to the 8th century.  It is a city of deep mystery, of labrynthine alleyways and hidden doorways leading to fantastic sights, including old Koranic schools, mosques, souks, workshops, and an amazing tannery.  The street food is wonderful and cheap, but you have to be willing to put up with watching live chickens and rabbits being butchered, sheep heads (eyeballs included) on display, and the smells from the butchers and fishmongers, the tannery, and the droppings of the donkeys and mules used as transport (no cars here), and other realities of life that have not changed much in hundreds of years.  You really cannot get much more exotic than that! After three nights in Fez, we hired a local to drive us to Marrakech, the other of the two most ancient royal cities.  Its old medina is not quite so amazing as Fez's, but it has a gigantic square filled with food stalls, snake charmers, monkey trainers, fortune tellers, dancers, boxers, story tellers, acrobats, magicians, and henna tattoo artists.  Ever wanted to try one of those sheep heads?  Here's your chance.  Wash it down with a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice for about 35 cents.  As an appetizer, try a bowl of snails, about a buck.  The goat stew is very tasty, as is the lentil soup, which will put you back about 35 cents.  Watch out for those snake charmers -- they are very persistent for tips, especially if you take a picture.  Marrakech also has a charming new city (built by the French) and many lovely gardens. After two nights in Marrakech, we left for a two-day trek in the High Atlas Mountains, including a climb up the highest peak in North Africa, Jebel Toubkal, 13,670 feet.  Wow!  We started at a Berber village called Imlil, where we met our guide, who took us to his home where we had breakfast with his folks while he made arrangements for a pack mule.  The trek to the Toubkal refuge (at about 10,000 feet) took about six hours, including lunch at a rest stop (Berber style) along the way.  We started the climb the next morning at 5:30AM and it took about three hours to get to the summit.  What an adventure! Our last night was spent in Casablanca, where we stayed with the parents of one of my students at West Virginia University.  Casablanca is large, very modern, very cosmopolitan, rather French looking, not surprisingly.  There is one fantastic sight, the second largest mosque in the world (number one is in Mecca), with a minaret 210 meters high.  I could not get a picture myself, but here is a Web site:http://architecture.about.com/library/blhassanIImosque.htm.  These are my pictures.  Perhaps they will inspire you to have your own Moroccan adventure.

Fez

 

Charlie in the living room of our suite in Riad Jaouhara in Fez.  A riad is a house built around a large courtyard that has a fountain.	Riads are a little expensive.  This one cost us about $100 per night, breakfast included.
Our riad's courtyard.	These goatskin lampshades come in many designs and colors and are easy to find in the medina.
The palace of some government minister from the 19th Century.  Not generally open to the public, but a good guide can get you in.  A guide will cost you about $28 for the day.	Detail from a palace doorway.
The Fez medina is a maze of narrow alleys lined with vendors.  Vendors often cluster by type either as side-by-side stalls along a street, such as this, or in souks, which are nothing more than openings in the maze.  For instance, one souk might specialize in carpenters' shops, another in threadmakers' shops.  In addition to vendors, there are craft shops or small factories, a tannery, restaurants, mosques, museums, and former madersas (religious schools), now all closed but serving as places of prayer.	This is a brass workers' shop.
A butcher, one of many side by side along an alley.	This butcher offers sheep heads.  Just pop one of these in a pot with some veggies and spices.  Yum!
A carpenter.  Again, one of many clustered together.	This shop is in a thread souk.  These shops are all more or less identical.
Guys' slippers.  Very common footwear in Morocco.	For the gals.
A souk specializing in carpenters' shops.	Delivery by mule and human.  Notice that a lot of these alleys and souks are covered with wooden latticework, which is often covered by vines.  It keeps the medina nice and cool.
More residential or commercial areas of the medina.	In alleys like this, you often see teenage boys making colorful thread, which they string up along the walls before winding the thread on spools.
The fruits and vegetables are glorious.  We soon learned to avoid the restaurants in the medina, which are relatively expensive and bland.  Instead, we would buy a few peaches and grapes, stop off at an olive vendor, and then get a pocket sandwich of grilled vegies with tangy sauces and a huge glass of freshly squeezed OJ.  The whole thing would come to a couple bucks.  That's living!	The fruit of prickly pears, known as Barbary figs.  Very common in Morocco.  Out in the country, there are fields of prickly pears all over.
This is the courtyard of an ancient madersa (religious school).  It is now used as a place to worship Allah.  The fountain is used to perform ablutions, an important part of the ritual.  Other than the kid hamming for the camera, that is what these men are doing.	Another madersa.
Delivery to the wool market.  There are no motorized vehicles in the medina.	The entrance to a hamman, or bathhouse.  Very important part of Moroccan life, especially for woman, who gather here to catch up on the gossip.  You sit on the floor of the steam room in a bathing suit and surround yourself with a few buckets of water with which you rinse yourself off at the end.  You can hire someone (or have a friend) rub you down with a rough glove.  Nothing like it, I am told.
This is the showroom of a Berber rug cooperative.  The selection is amazing but come prepared for the hardest bargaining of your life.  Westerners not used to Moroccan-style bargaining can be very put off by it.  Salesmen always start off by handing you a glass of mint tea telling you that there is no pressure to buy and that friendship is all that matters.  Don't believe it for a moment!	Check out the mosaics.  Imagine what it would cost to have this done in your home.
And here's where it's made.  By hand, one little piece at a time with this big hammer.	The boy on the left is tracing out designs.  Over time, he will learn skills and progress to master mosaic tile maker, like the guy in the corner.
Same factory.  They make plates, mosaic tiles, regular tiles, roof tiles, cookware, and doodads.	This is their oven  They are getting ready to load it with roof tiles.
A loom.  This shop has two.  The guy you see there pulls  on strings to lift different threads on the loom, which you see stretched out on the right.  Another guy, sitting behind the loom passes a shuttle back and forth between the threads that are lifted up and those that are left down, thus producing the pattern.  How pulling on all the different strings relates to a specific design is all stored in this guy's head.	The other loom.
This is one of the most fascinating parts of the medina.  The tannery.  Leather has been tanned here using more or less the same technology for hundreds of years.  Jobs here have been handed down from father to son for generations, though why anyone would want his son to do this work is beyond me.	You have to experience the stench to appreciate it.  There is all that dead animal skin, for one thing, and the process starts with a long soaking in bird poop, the white area at the upper left.  The yellow on the roofs at the upper left is tumerac, which is also a part of the process.
The first stage -- soaking in vats of bird poop.  Pigeon poop, to be exact.	A worker is coating skins with the turmeric.
Vats of vegetable pigment.	Each color is made from different plants.  Mint, indigo, tumerac, henna.
Traditional wedding chairs for rent.	Wool souk.
The entrance to the left is to a restored fondouk, a place where foreign traders would keep their horses and rent rooms while in town.  In the 12th Century, there were hundreds of these in Fez, and they often served as places of entertainment, intrigue, and vice.  Quite a few remain today, but are used as workshops, warehouses, and residences. This one is a museum.	This is the inside of the fondouk.  The animals were kept on the ground floor, while their human masters stayed in rooms in the upper floors.  Note the large scales to the right and left for weighing merchandise.  Rich students also rented rooms in fondouks.
The entrance to a mosque.  Note the keyhole shape of the entrance, which you see everywhere, especially in mosques.  The shape suggests the key to paradise.	Another mosque.
A closed window at a mosque.  Note the hole, used to slip in supplications and monetary donations.	Folks milling around the entrance to a mosque.  Note the variation in women's head dress, or hijab.  Some completely cover the hair and the face, as does the woman on the left.  Others, like the woman on the right, wear just a loose scarf.  Others wear nothing at all on the head.  Similarly, there is variation in women's dress in general.  The woman on the left wears a loose robe that covers all but her hands and conceals her shape.  Others wear more western dress, with or without the hijab.  I have even seen spandex!
Very traditional dress.  As I recall, she was begging.	The medina walls.  Those are storks, a common sight in Morocco.
The medina wall.	Entrance to the royal palace in Fez.  The Moroccan head of state is a king  with more or less absolute power, although the current king, Mohammed VI Ben Al-Hassan, who ascended to the throne in 1999, is instituting democratic reforms.  This is one of many palaces.
On the road to Marrakech.  The hills are part of the Atlas mountain range, a dominant feature in Morocco.  Most of Morocco is arid but there are many springs and streams that irrigate orchards of olive and citrus trees and lots and lots of prickly pears.	Also lots of goats and sheep in this area.
A town along the way.	We encountered this an hour or so from Marrakech.  I am guessing this supplies water to the city.
These are tagines.  The word refers to both the cooking utensil and the food.  The utensil is in three parts.  The first is the base, which you see on the left.  The food, usually meat such as beef, lamb, chicken, or fish, along with vegetables, sometimes fruit, and lots of spices, are placed in the base, which is set atop a pot containing glowing charcoal.  Then a conical top is placed on the base.  Moisture condenses on the cool upper part of the top and falls back down, moisturizing the food, which can cook for a couple hours, depending on the type of meat, if any.	We encountered this scene at a roadside restaurant on the way to Marrakech.  Here the cook is adding onions.  Tagines can be very, very good.  Tagines (the cookware) can be purchased in Morocco for a few bucks.  Or you can fork over a hundred or so bucks for a tagine from Williams-Sonoma.
While we were eating, the slaughter-house delivery truck arrived.  They hung these carcasses all around us.  This guy was unfazed, even as a swinging carcass knocked over his bread basket.  A different world.	The old medina of Marrakech.  Marrakech is a prettier city than Fez, though perhaps it lacks some of the mystery of Fez.
One thing Marrakech has is this huge square, Djemaa El Fna.  At the other end of the short boulevard is the Koutoubia Mosque, one of the loveliest in Morocco, whose 70-meter minaret you see in the background.  The mosque was built during the reign of Yacoub el-Mansour (1184-1199). During the day, Djemaa El Fna is sparsely filled with snake charmers, monkey trainers, fortune tellers, henna tattoo artists, etc., and lots of (mostly domestic) tourists.  The stalls you see in the foreground are all selling freshly squeezed OJ for about 35 cents for a very large glass.	By night, Djemaa El Fna is nuts!  Dancers, acrobats, story tellers, musicians, magicians, and hundreds of food vendors selling boiled sheep heads, goat stew, lentil soup, grilled vegetables, snails, olives, and tons and tons of that incredible OJ.  You have to see it (and hear it and smell it) to believe it.
One of dozens of food stalls in Djemaa El Fna.  This one serves whole sheep heads.  They taste absolutely foul.	My son Charlie eating snails at another food stall at Djemaa El Fna.  Now these are delicious.
This food vendor had great food, including lentil soup for 35 cents.	Snails.  A buck a bowl.  Beat that price in Paris!
OJ vendors.  A tall glass squeezed as you watch is about 35 cents.	The Marrakech medina.  The selection of hand-woven wool rugs in Morocco is huge.  But be prepared to bargain hard.
This shop specializes in bellows, presumably to get your tagine started.	Spices.  With several shops clustered in one place, the smells are wonderful.
The smells in this area are not so wonderful!	Don't stick around here if you don't want to see a bunny get its throat slit.  Sorry, but that is the reality of life and they tend not to hide this sort of thing here.
One side along Djemaa El Fna.	The white structure is the tomb of Fatima Zohra, the daughter of a 17th Century religious leader.  Legend has it that she was a woman by day and a white dove by night.
The Koutoubia Mosque at twilight.  From the top of a minaret, the call to prayers is broadcast five times a day.  When you are standing between several mosques, the effect is beautiful and exotic.  However, don't pick your lodgings too close to one unless you really do want to wake up before 5AM.  By the way, that early morning call goes something like this:  "Allah is great.  Prayer is better than sleep.  Allah is great."  Repeat several times.	Marrakech has many lovely gardens, especially in the new town.
A quiet place to read.	Papyrus.
I love the earthy colors of Morocco.
This is the palace of some 19th Century prime minister, who had four wives and 29 concubines, at one point.  The head wife had a very large room all to herself, the three lesser wives had smaller rooms.	The concubines had rooms around this courtyard.  Their dining hall was there at the end.
This is a distinctly Moroccan dress called a djelaba and is worn by both men and women.  The women's version will have embroidery along the front, while men's are plain.	Medina rooftops and one of many minarets.
Berber rugs airing in the sun.	A stork's nest on top of a minaret.
On the road again.  We are heading south out of Marrakech for a two-day trek in the High Atlas Mountains.  The highlight of the trek was climbing Jebel Toubkal, at 13,670 feet, it is the highest mountain in North Africa.  This is a picturesque Berber village along the way to Imlil, where we began our trek.	Another village in the Atlas Mountains.
Imlil, a Berber village, where we began our trek.	Walking through the alleyways of Imlil.
Our guide lahssan is at right, sitting next to his father.  We began our trek with a hardy breakfast of bread dipped in honey and egg yolk, with olives and mint tea at lahssan's home.	No streets.  Everything is carried by mule or people power.
Flowers on lahssan's porch with the mountains in the background.	Off we go, starting with a dry stream bed.
Outskirts of Imlil.	Mules and donkeys are the only forms of transportation out here.  And your own two feet.
Garden terraces.	These terraces are irrigated by water taken from a stream, which we followed all the way to Toubkal.
This is the stream.  Not much, but they make good use of it.	Starting to get rugged.
The trees are walnut, according to our guide.  These got left behind fairly quickly, leaving just thistle and these clumps of plants, including one with pretty yellow flowers.	Here's a close-up.
The trek gets steep.	And steeper.
A "trek stop" where we had lunch.  Sardines and salad.  Sardines are a major Moroccan export.	Locals at the trek stop.
Our guide lahssan (left) and mule driver.	The Berbers graze their goats out here.
Berber tents.	Some sort of shrine, I am told.
Lots of pack mules on the trail.	After about six hours, we approach the refuge at the base of Toubkal at about 10,000 feet.
The refuge.  Toubkal is to the left.	We start our climb at 5:30AM.  It was just starting to get light out and it was some time before I had enough light to take pictures.  Here's me (the shadow) with Charlie, lahssan, and a twelve year old trainee who tagged along.
Getting higher and higher.	Much of the climb involved scrambling over scree (which, while not technical, is exhausting).  The climb did get vertical in places, but not so that any special equipment was needed.
Getting high.  Actually, at this altitude, it's real easy to get dizzy, so we had to make frequent stops.	The view from the top.
Charlie surveys the scene.	I am sitting on the edge of a cliff looking down.  Way down.
A wind break at the top where we stopped for a snack and to chat with a group of French climbers who arrived shortly after us.  It is cold up there and the wind was howling.  On the way up, we passed areas of permanent snow.	Charlie under the marker placed at the highest point in North Africa.
Looking back after the climb.  Toubkal is hidden behind this scree field.	Climbing this scree is exhausting.  You get to the top of it and look up at Toubkal and cannot believe what comes next.
Me hitching a ride on our pack mule on the way back to Imlil.	Our last night in Morocco.  We stayed in Casablanca with Nezha and Hassan Salimi, the parents of one of our doctoral students, Jawad.  We could not have had more delightful and helpful hosts.fashioninn4us.blogspot.com