Our time in Chefchaouen was up and it
was time to head to Meknes. The maps quoted us a 3 hour trip. We
decided to grab some breakfast before heading out, not knowing if any
viable food options would be available on our drive.
Right before heading out we went for
one last stroll through the Medina. Tim spotted an article of
authentic designer clothing he wanted to purchase. Notice the fine quality and
the consistency of the logos. The stitching is also top notch.
After looking through the rest of the
medians offerings we were off to Meknes.
I was able to get the gps unit to
locate us and find our destination but it still was a bit off.
We ended up using road signs to
guide us. We went a little photo crazy on this drive. Tim noticed how
green everything is and this is literally the first time anyone in
the car has made that observation.
We encountered a number of different
road signs along the way. Now for your reading pleasure we present
Tim and Jake's guide to North African road signs.
Watch out for slippery snakes
Pedophile crossing
A cup warning
Punctuation ahead
Stop! Skate rentals ahead
Death to America
"Attention! Whatever you do, do not got to Meknes.
Continue onto Fes" We should have paid attention to this one.
We arrived in town and found a parking
spot right outside of the Medina. It was pay parking so we told the
man we would only be an hour. We headed inside the Medina. Meknes
seemed to favor the Orange walls over the blue.
We were pretty instantly overwhelmed.
This Medina was much larger than ones I had visited. On top of that there
were no signs for the riad we had booked. I think we were able to
find just about every other lodging option but our own. We tried
every entrance into the medina with no avail. We even asked people in
the medina for direction and no one had heard of our seemingly
nonexistent riad. Approaching 5pm and having not eaten since
breakfast everything started to look fuzzy and disorienting.
After almost 2 hours of looking I
finally spotted a small handwritten sign tucked away to the side with the desired name pointing down the street. Elated we followed it to a
mosque entrance. We were stopped by the attendant and I
pointed to the piece of paper with the riad name on it. He had
actually heard of it and pointed down the street. We followed his
directions and were lead to a fork in the road.
Veering to the left we carefully looked around but there was nothing but shops. After some time we tried the other tong and eventually we came upon another
little sign. Shortly there after we stumbled onto our stop for the night.
How someone is supposed to find this place with the signs provided I
do not know, it was ridiculous. Frustrated and exhausted we knocked
on the door and we were let in the riad.
They offered us tea and had us fill out
the required paperwork. Then they left. For good. No one else was around in
the lobby and all of the rooms seemed to be empty. We were the only
people staying here. Not a good sign. Eventually we wondered into the
kitchen and found the lady that had let us in. She then took us to
our room.
Upon first glance it seemed like a nice
place. They even had a recent award for cleanliness they received
from some place called hostel bookers. Upon further inspection we
noticed the following features of the hostel:
- Shower had no water pressure and no hot
water
- Toilet was running and was missing
parts so it would not flush. You could get it to stop running for a 3
dh fee.
- We didn’t have a key to the front
door. Any time we wanted back into the riad we had to knock and hope
one of the staff heard us to let us in.
- Lastly both of our comforters had old
rat turds crusted into them.
It was a great place. Meknes was turning out to be really awesome! Needing to stomp out our continuing hunger we set out to get some food. I was craving pizza and they had a pizza place just outside the Medina wall we spotted when we were hopelessly lost. Every time we left the riad we had trouble not only finding our way out of the Medina but finding our way back in. This was no exception. When we finally made it to the gate where we were presented with the following.
Up to this point the streets had been
fairly clear and moving around was easy, but we had stumbled onto
some sort of impromptu market that everyone in town decided to shop in all at once. People would just start selling
things in the middle of the crowd and block all of the walk ways. It was
truly horrible. It was like walking through the worlds biggest club.
We were already starving and this was another detour to our culinary
happiness.
After about 45 minutes we escaped
the consumer mob and got our pizza. The menu was in Arabic and French
so we had to piece our limited french knowledge to order. I got the
only pizza I saw that that had ham, Tim was feeling frisky and got
the one with calamari.
Our results were predictable as I was
presented a meat lovers pizza and Tim was presented with a seafood
pizza. Neither were particularly good but Tim's was particularly
horrible. I don’t know what he was thinking ordering seafood pizza
in inland Morocco. He had
about two pieces and called it. It was covered in squid rings,
anchovies, and what they called shrimp. Most of it tasted pretty old.
On our way back to the riad we got lost
yet again and it took us longer than it should have to get home. The
streets had cleared out from the mass of people and things seemed to
be back to normal. We rested a bit and decided to go out one last
time because our dinner was not sufficient. This time the Medina was
empty, the shops were closed, and the streets were lined with
garbage. The only food we could find was bread and water. We are
ready to get out of this hole.
