Tuesday 17 October
Today we head to Volubilis, about an hours drive from Fes and another ABR. Another Bloody Ruin. This from Phonecian times, and then inhabited by 15000 Romans. Our guide for the one hour long tour is Khalid and his is a tour by rote. He is completely thrown by any unsolicited questions and has to start again. Still, anyone is better than Obi. Khalid gives us a tour of the town, which was largely destroyed by an earthquake in seventeen hundred and something, and even gives a demonstration of what a latrine was used for.  Fortunately today was not a dress rehearsal.

This must have been an amazing city in its day. It is huge and has at least two extremely large villas, where Caligula spent a lot of time. So too did Baccus, but wasn’t he always w(h)ining?
There was also a zoo, represented here by one of many mosaic animals.

Ancient Roman ruins are joined by ancient Roman telephone wires

And Ancient Australian tourists

I shoot Khalid before I shoot him, and we wave him farewell

The view from the old Volubilis of the new shows the landscape

After we leave Volubilis, we head to Meknes, one of four imperial cities in Morocco (the others being Rabat, Marrakech and Fes). We have lunch there, which just confirms that we are over Moroccan food. It’s all the same and the servings, at least for tourists, are enormous. We never finish more than half and the restaurants we are taken to are all 3 course. It seems that a request for a simple salad is an impossible one to meet. Today our simple salad, the entree to a main omlette, was obscenely large and we couldn’t even complete that. After lunch we report to Jillali that we never want to do a luncheon restaurant again. Unfortunately, this is read as we never want to eat again and so, ala willing, we may return home slender.
The main square of Meknes is enormous

But instead of just horsing around,

we are anxious to get back to Fes to visit the Jardin Jnane Sbil, an 18th Century public garden which was on the itinerary for yesterday but the gardens are closed on a Monday.
We return via a different route, past lots of ploughed fields waiting for the overdue rain so that the wheat and barley can be planted, and acres of olive groves and grapes.

We get back to Fes and the gardens at 4pm.

The gardens close at 4pm.

So we head to the bottle shop instead and buy two bottles, which Jillali ties securely in a bag and hides under the seat of the car, to be taken to the desert where he reckons we will need it most.
Dinner in the riad again tonight. We try the chicken pie, to compare it with the delicious one of last night. Incomparable. This one is dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon – the Moroccan sweet tooth is literally to die for I suspect. Even the bottle of wine is left unfinished as we head to an early night. This holiday lark is exhausting.