We slept hard until around 8:30 am, and then slowly checked out our surroundings. Having come in late at night we couldn’t appreciate the beautiful views across the valley – grassy knolls, olive trees and herb gardens. I noticed some horses across the way, and far in the distance some green mountains. We both enjoyed the first shower in nearly 48 hours – it really hit the spot.
When we came downstairs it appeared that we were the only ones up, except for some noise in the kitchen. The house was big and we padded around in our socks, enjoying views from different sides. There was a big infinity pool in the back next to the big glass windows that enclosed the large space where we had dinner the night before. There was a homemade drying rack filled with various herbs, and plenty of comfortable furniture to lounge on.
I made a short expedition to the kitchen and found Aida’s partner who cooked most of the food the previous evening and was working on our upcoming breakfast. There was a big language block here – she mostly spoke Amazigh (a Moroccan form of Berber) but she could understand a little French. I typed out some thank yous in Google translate, and somehow I think we got the message across.
Soon people started to get up, and we had a good conversation with Kiana. She was happy to speak English with us, and told us all about her recommended places and foods. I asked her to write down everyone’s name from the party, and she was kind enough to give us the information that we should have absorbed the night before. We got a Jenga game going with Adam, and together they taught me how to say “It’s your turn” in French.
Aida served a really big breakfast – there were several kinds of pancakes (some sweet and some savory) with some homemade herbed butter and a garlic yogurt sauce, roasted tomatoes with yogurt and cinnamon, some really delicious mint tea (this set out mint tea standard way too high at the beginning of the trip), eggs with spices and coriander seeds cooked in the Turkish style.
It was nice to talk with people again, this time with a clearer head. Nassim especially had some great impressions of Japan and we talked with her quite a bit. She mentioned that she would also be in Lisbon for new years and said she might be able to score an invitation to a party with the UK ambassador. This sounded like something we’d have to upgrade our travel wardrobe for, but as it turned out we didn’t hear from her again while we were in Portugal so no worries.
We walked around the outside of La Finca, enjoying the beautiful views, meeting their donkey (Sam) and avoiding the occasionally growling dogs who didn’t really get along with each other so well.
Finally it was time to hit the road – Aida gave us a wonderful going away present of some honeys and herbs from Morocco which was very kind, and we said goodbye to everyone. It was a whirlwind visit, but we were trying to stay out of their hair – they are a busy group!
Othman was nice enough to drive us back into town with Nassim and Kiana. We passed two accidents on the way back – driving in Morocco looks pretty chaotic. I’m glad I wasn’t behind the wheel. He drove us along the seaside, pointing out the sights, including good surfing spots, and the newly built Four Seasons resort. He got us right to the edge of the medina (old town) and let us off and said goodbye.
That was the last we saw of Aida and Othman, but I’m sure they have a great future together. They were so kind to host us and I hope we’ll see them again, either in Morocco or here in Japan.
So now for the rest of the trip we were going to be on our own, which is how we usually travel. It felt good to be set free in a new country. We walked through the chilly narrow streets to find our riad (traditional type bed/breakfast) called Dar Shaan, recommended to us by Aida. We just dropped off our bags because it was still early, and then went off to look around a bit.
We started with the Kasbah, on the northeast edge of Rabat. Near the entrance a talkative guy tried to steer us in a particular direction, asking where we are from, which in our experience means that they are trying to steer you into some form of payment somehow. So we kind of brushed him off and went the direction we wanted. This turned out to be pretty common for the rest of Morocco and we were always brushing off overly friendly people. I know that by doing this we are running the risk of missing out on an actual friendly encounter, but I just like doing things on our own.
Through the Kasbah there were many shops selling traditional and touristy goods, plenty of cats everywhere (which reminded us of Istanbul), and some pretty doors ornamented with tiles. We enjoyed views of the ocean for a while, then walked back down into the medina to check out the shops and food situation. The streets were narrow but lined with many shops, and above some beautiful wooden slats providing shade seemed like a good idea for summer. My phone had a sudden malfunction and so I had to futz with it a bit – turns out that it did an accessibility zoom and I had to restart the phone to get it back to normal.
The square with lots of food stands seemed a little dirty to me with an off smell from somewhere, so we decided to skip buying fried fish from the vendors here. The shopkeepers around didn’t really put on a lot of pressure and were fine just letting us walk by – this was one of the good points of the medina in Rabat.
By this time we could check in at our hotel, so we went back and got our room. On the third floor, we accessed it by a super narrow elevator. The doors were a little scary as there was nothing stopping you from touching the outside walls as they went by. But the room was quite nice, and being on the top floor we had easy access to the patio overlooking the city. The staff served us a welcome drink – we chose Moroccan wine, a white and a red – and we munched on olives while sipping wine and enjoying the view. Now it felt like we were on vacation.
We did a little research into what restaurant to check out first. I had found one place that seemed like it served traditional food more for locals than tourists, so we set our sights on that place for dinner. It was a bit of a walk from our hotel, but that gave us a great chance to see more of Rabat. Also, as it happened we could pre-walk our route to the train station for the next day, so it was a win-win.
Passing through the old town and out the other side we could see that it wasn’t really that touristy. Many people were walking around but mostly local people rather than tour groups, and of course so many cats – everywhere.
We walked through a slightly more modern area, with more westernized buildings, and busy traffic circles. There were shoe shiners, construction workers, and a surprising amount of soldiers (with rifles), but it didn’t seem like there was any tension around them. Eventually we passed Rabat Ville station and marked it in our memories for tomorrow, and then finally our target restaurant, facing a light rail line with very modern train cars.
Outside the restaurant there was a bouncer, definitely a bad sign, but we went in anyway, and there was a really weird vibe. More of a bar than a restaurant, the room was dark and some live music was playing in the corner. All the patrons were old guys, drinking beers served in buckets. A cleaning lady looked up at us but turned her head away, and nobody approached us to see what we wanted. I was guessing that Google was out of date on this one. With everyone still watching us curiously we ducked out.
An emergency Google session led us to another restaurant nearby. This one was pretty touristy but we were getting hungry and thought it was best just to sit down and eat. We got a table outside and it was a good place to watch people walk by – and it was interesting that those people watched us just as much as we watched them. One lady even said “Bon appetit!” as she walked by.
Our waiter gave us menus and said that he didn’t speak English but asked if we spoke Spanish. I responded in Spanish and thought we’d be OK, but I guess my response wasn’t very clear because a new waiter came next and handled everything in English. We drank some juices (no booze on the menu) and Kuniko’s avocado “juice” was a big hit – it was blended with milk and so creamy… wow!
We had some couscous and pfasa. The pfasa seemed similar to what we ate at Aida’s place, but according to locals it was a different dish. The food was good – not as spicy as I expected, but tasty. There certainly was a lot of food there – we probably could have split one dish and been OK, but it is good to try various things.
We finished with some mint tea and paid the bill – a little pricey (180 MAD) but we were happy to fill our bellies. Walking back to our hotel the streets seemed a little busier now, and this time we saw more stray dogs to go with all the stray cats. The street now had lot of food stands open, but most of them were pizza, burgers, fried snacks and so we didn’t feel like we would have wanted to go there anyway.
Back at the hotel we were pretty tired and went to bed super early, still trying to get equalized with the exhaustion and jet lag. The neighbors came to their room a bit loudly, but we couldn’t really complain as we were in bed by 6:30 pm. We were eager to get on a train and see more of the country tomorrow.
