Blogs from Rabat, Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaer, Morocco, Africa - page 14

After a 3 hour train trip from Fes, we rocked the Kasbah in Rabat! Release of a New Mukluk Music Video will hopefully be premiered in Madrid! Come back to Rabat Blog for private screening! We entered the Kasbah by the Bab Oudaia, gate of the Kasbah, and toured the walled Kasbah with a self-appointed guide (100 dirhams later, we were thankfully ceremoniously dropped off at the Andalusian Gardens). The Bab Oudaia, which is considered to be the most beautiful in the Moorish World, lived up to expectations, although the gate was closed (along with most other tourist sights across Morocco) given the Prophet's Birthday. The Kasbah, the citadel of Almohad, Merenid and Andalusian towns, has the oldest Mosque in the city, and an interesting array of decorated doors. The walls were white washed with blue ... read more

After 4 days of not showering, braving turkish toilets, and eating every meal with my right hand, I have to say that my time in Morocco was an absolutely incredible and mind-blowing experience. after an underwhelming thanksgiving dinner (it lacked such essential elements as sweet potatoes and green beans) i ran back to my place to shower and change as well as do a quick chat with the fam on skype. got my 10:30 overnight bus to Algeciras, a port city in the south of Spain, and had a miserable night's sleep crammed into a seat seemingly made for gnomes. a few others on the bus stuck out as americans and sure enough they were part of morocco exchange as well. at 6:30 we got into the station and basically hung around for two hours until ... read more

Salaam and welcome to Rabat the capital of Morocco. According to the Lonely Planet this is a place where you come to undertake essential business and rest from life on the African road. We have found it to be more of a place where you can see how Morocco really works, how people make their money and how rich and poor collide in a city deviod of the tourist scene that dominates both Fes and Marrakech. Alice fell for Rabat almost immediately while I took a while to come around to it's charms. The feeling of being utterly faceless was strange at first, particularly after the interest shown towards us in Fes. Once we got over this we found we could use it very much to our advantage by blending in with the bustling crowds of ... read more

Bread and jam was the free breakfast at the youth hostel and we enjoyed it in the courtyard before packing and heading through the grand gates of the medina. The best way to look around was to get as lost as possible in the maze of streets and shops and we were in there for well over an hour. Paul emerged with a fake Nike Morocco soccer shirt that he picked up for Dh100. Kasbah Des Oudaias stands guarding the mouth of Oued Bou Regreg, the river that seperates Rabat from Salé and introduces itself with a grandiose gate that dates back to 1195, Bab Odaia. The huge building is adorned with Arabic verse and, thanks to it's scenic location, has to be a "must see" in Morocco. We wandered around the Kasbah grounds and stumbled ... read more

Rabat is an amazing city, I only wish I had more time to visit it. The Peace Corps is keeping us busy all day with training and such. We have to go through safety and PC policies and learn countless acronyms and names which sound very unpronouncable at first. I wish I had more exciting news, but for now it's mostly meetings in a windowless room just like in Philadelphia. They're interesting, but they're still meetings. Instead I'd like to leave you with some of my favorite parts of what we've been talking about. The cover of the PC Morocco Pre-Service Training Handbook has a very appropriate poem by Lao-Tsu (6th century BC). Go to the people Live with the people Start with the people Work with what the people know Learn by doing Teach by ... read more