Marrakesh

We stopped at a good campsite on the outskirts of Marrakesh, Morocco's third largest city and perhaps the one most visited by tourists. The journey there was through rather flat featureless desert.

We saw some camels on the side of the road.

Our driver dropped us at the edge of the medina and next to an ancient mosque.

The main thing to see here is the large central square. Even early in the morning it is busy with tourist horse drawn carriages.

There are people in traditional costume wanting yu to take a picture of them with yourself and of course for a fee.

The monkey man will drop the monkey on your shoulder and expect you to pay him or perhaps take a picture of you holding the monkey.

The snake charmers were perhaps the most pushy standing in you way demanding money. Take a photo and you will be hounded by several until they have extracted as much as they think that they can get out of you. Some would follow you into the souk still trying to get money from you. Altogether not a pleasant experience. It was perhaps the worst city that we had visited.

 A street scene away from the tourist area of a row of blacksmiths forges.

 Another gateway over a road.

 And I had a tuna salad for lunch whilst being offered watches, bags and leather goods by street hawkers and acrobats performing in the street and then coming round with a hat.

But I still got a few photos of doors to add to my collection. It was becoming a challenge to find doors that were not painted blue.

 Another very ornate door to a mosque.

And yet more doors.

Rabat doorways

And after Chefchaouen and their doorways, here are some Rabat doorways, all taken in the medina.

Rabat

We left Casablanca and Mohammedia and drove to the capital Rabat. Driving standards vary in different countries and those of you who often visit Blue Coats Sports club at Christ's Hospital will know that parking can be difficult at times and made more difficult when not everyone parks between the white lines. But how about this for parking?

One car, two spaces.

Most of both cars are within the white lines.

One car, four spaces.

Another one car, four spaces.

Such a common sight.

This one didn't even try to be within the white lines.

Sometimes you can blame the other person for parking badly but the white car is neatly aligned with the black car.

We would be spending that night in a bush camp in a cork oak forest a few kilometres outside of the city. The trees were well spaced out with little vegetation beneath them, just sand. The truck got trapped in the soft sand twice and we had to use the sand mats to get out of the forest.

But besides the comical parking standards in the supermarket car park, there is plenty of interest to see in Rabat. One of the gates to Sale Medina, part of the newer part of the walled city and a section of wall.

The walls look good from the outside but were less well maintained on the inside.

Just outside the city walls is a large cemetery between the city walls, the river and the old medina on the far side of the river.

A cloc=ser view of the old medina over the cemetery.

The grand gate to the kasbah, built more to impress than as an effective defensive construction.

One of the lower battlements beneath the kasbah with a bartizan perched on the corner.

One of the larger gates to the old city, just one of fifteen.

This is a separate part of the city with its own walls and entrance called Chellah. It was abandoned in favour of Sale Medina which is on the other side of the river and nearer to the harbour.

Inside Chellah, there are some ruins but little survives and much of it has been turned into gardens. The only residents and several pairs of nesting storks.

The past sight in the city wa the unfinished King Hassan II mosque, which is a maze of shrt unfinished columns.

 One of the guards in full ceremonial uniform.

A detail of the intricate carving in one of the buildings on site.