I’ve been a little remiss in not fully describing the riad, Dar El Hana. Aside from being quite beautiful and possessing wonderful, friendly staff, it does have its individuality. Somewhere quite nearby is a mosque, and at 5.30 every morning they crank out the call to prayer. It’s par for the course when travelling through Moslem nations, you just deal with it. Our local caller, however, really loves his job. The first call to prayer is the grease-megamix-produced-by-jim-steinman-extended version. Long after the other mosques have gone back to bed, our guy is still just getting started. He’s a master artist. To find the riad, it’s good to have a landmark.…

Our first full day in Fes, and we have a guide booked to show us the sights. But before Ben and the other amazing staff person, Fatima, will let us leave the riad we must consume our body weight in breads, crepes, james, preserves and mint tea (L scored with rice cakes and coffee). Josephine popped up and asked if we’d had eggs and fruit as well, and sais she’d arrange this for tomorrow (despite our protestations that we really had a goodly amount  of food here that we were struggling through). At around 9am our guide, Kamal, turned up. He’s a bit of a character, knows lots of people…

Volubilis is pretty cool. One minute you’re driving along, the next there are a bunch of Roman columns and walls rising out of the farmland. We skipped paying for a guide, choosing instead to wander the  streets in search of mosaics. One one level, it’s sad that Roman ruins are just that: ruins. Having previously seen Pompeii, where a lot of the town is still intact, Volubilis was a little bit disappointing in that regard, with few walls standing above waist height, and a lot of the houses quite overgrown. There were sttill some fascinating sites, admiring the stone work on the column tops (L is the one who did…