Meknes and Oualili

Fall 2018 First newsletter by Erin Nelsen

On Saturday, we woke up bright and much too early to catch the bus to Meknes. We watched out the windows as the buildings of Rabat transformed into a landscape dotted with trees and camels and then again to rolling green hills. Our first stop was the Roman ruins of Volubilis. We wandered around the UNESCO world heritage site for several hours soaking in the archaeological site and beautiful scenery as we learned about Roman influence in Morocco contextualizing the history we recently learned in class. 

Our next stop was Moulay Idriss, a picturesque town in near Meknes spread between two hills. After several photos, we continued to Meknes where we shared a lovely group lunch at a local restaurant. We had some delicious vegetable dishes, kebabs, fruit, and of course, خبز, or ‘bread’ in Fusha, without which no meal is complete. After atay, aka ‘tea’ in Darija, we went on a quick guided tour of Meknes’ old medina. We saw the ornately decorated gateway of Bab Mansour, the city square bustling with tourists, vendors, monkey and snake charmers, and the many winding streets of the city. During our break, several of us pooled together our srf, ‘change’ in Darija, to buy a tub of ice-cream from the Hanut which we ate in the shadow of the city walls.