Rabat: Chellah ruins and Kasbah

After leaving Casablanca we drove further North to Rabat, the capital of Morocco and a town that hides some secrets.

Before driving into the city we stopped at Chellah - a necropolis and complex of ancient Roman and medieval ruins at the outskirts of Rabat. 

An interesting place in decent condition, which became listed as UNESCO world heritage sight in 2012. It's worth a visit, especially when you are in the neighborhood.

Security here is very sharp :-)

On the way to the city center...

... we had our first encounter with the police. On this roundabout...

... we needed to take the second exit, and as soon as we were about to drive into it, the policeman pulled us aside, which came as the complete surprise. In our opinion, we really didn't do anything wrong and we were not speeding. Five minutes into a weird conversation, where he was speaking French and we - English, we finally got it: apparently in Morocco the rules of driving on roundabouts are such, that even if you are already driving around it, you still need to give way to the cars, that are coming from your right, which is complete opposite to the rules in Holland.  

Before coming to Morocco I read somebody's advice not to use French when talking to the police, as they tend to let you go in most of the cases when it becomes obvious that they can't communicate with you. So, lucky for us, the guy didn't speak any English and we pretended that we didn't understand a word he was saying, so he decided not to bother and just motioned that we can drive further. Which we gladly did with the sigh of relief.

In Rabat we wanted to see Kasbah of the Udayas - a kind of fortress similar to medina quarter, but built only for people to live in (as opposite to traditional medina, where all kind of things are being sold all around). It was on the hill just above the sea and instead of driving, we decided to walk through the medina to get to it.

One the venders was selling freshly squeezed orange juice made from the local oranges. Earlier in Marrakech we only saw "fresh" juice being sold already in bottles and we had some doubts about how fresh it really was. We both decided then that unless we actually see it being squeezed in front of us, we wouldn't buy it. And eventually had to wait until we were in Rabat to do it.

Once in front of the Kasbah we were stopped by a guy who suggested we took him as a guide. Out of curiosity we asked how much he would charge. His price was 15 euros. We both made a "face" and told him that we can give him 3 and that will be already more than fair.  With a sad sigh he settled on 4 euros (bargaining is such fun!) and we were ready to go.

Entering Kasbah was like entering a different country. We were already used to seeing red or sand-color walls everywhere, but here all the houses were painted white & blue. We discovered Rabat's little secret! All of a sudden it felt like we were somewhere in Greece and not in Morocco.

Kasbah is divided in 3 part - Jewish, Muslim and Berber, with Jewish part being the largest one. But on the outside you can't really see which is which.

We saw this door handle in a shape of scissors on quite a few houses and our guess is that most of them are tailors. A handy way to let people know what you do for a living.

The only alley leading to the Kasbah's wall with the sea view turned out to be closed for entering and the guard standing there was keen on letting no one in. At this point we happily learned that having a guide was quite useful; he and the guard were neighbors and the guard was willing to make an exception. Yep, for free!

Overall, our guide was taking his job very seriously - he told us tons of stories about the place and its history, frequently volunteered to take "together" pictures and even guarded us from everyone trying to sell us something :-)

We stopped at Kasbah's only café for some Moroccan tea...

... before going back to the car.

We still had about 2 hours drive ahead of us before we would get to Fes. So far, we loved being on the road, as the scenery was beautiful and different the whole time and almost every turn of the road deserved to be photographed.

Next: Fez - getting lost in the medina of Fès el-Bali, the tanneries and the evening prayers