Rabat: Capital City

Rabat,on the coast about 1 hour north of Casablanca, is Morocco's capital. We stayed on the fringes of the Medina just up the road from the Mausoleum of Mohammed V and the earthquake damaged remains of Le Tour Hassan. When we arrived at the Mausoleum complex in the late afternoon we were basically on our own and able to freely wander around but then the tour buses arrived: and we left! Our first full day was spent orientin: finding our way to the Medina and the Walled Kasbah on the beach front. The blue and white(wash) of the Medina was very similar to the colours of Santorini and the souks also very much the same: both places were built high on cliff tops overlooking the sea. Rabat was a great place to walk in: through the Medina (on at least two occasions and never hassled by touts), the Kasbah and the Ville Nouvelle. We walked to, through the Andalusian Gardens of the Kasbah, an unkempt but richly aromatic and cool oasis in the heat of the day. Across the city precinct and into the Archaeology Museum with no-one around to collect our 20DHS entry fee. But we went in anyway, looked around and just as we were about to leave, the custodian turned up - and we handed over our money. The next day we walked again (in the cool of the morning it had rained at night) to the Chellah, past armed guards and into the abandoned and crumbling ruins of an ancient Roman city (which later became the Necropolis of the Merenid people before they in turn left and established the city of Sale)with the aroma of orange blossom and the sight of storks nesting in abandoned high points.