This used t be someone’s Muslin home, but now is a carpet store. Notice this is the center of the house and the ceiling used to be open, but now it’s covered with a tarp. The floors are always tile, since they get wet when it rains. You can see the circular drain in the floor too. The floors are angled slightly so the water drains.
As I’ve experienced on other trips, free cups of tea is served and these men work very hard to get a sale of these very expensive carpets. I left for the bathroom as the salesmen approached. Unfortunately, they waited for me but were disappointed in no sale from me.
This was simply amazing to me. And the tour guide was VERY excited to provide the info.
The way Arabic numbers got their names was the the number of angles in the symbol. 1 has ONE angle. 2 has TWO angles. 3 have THREE angles; all the way to 9!!
And math could not be invented until they had a 0. The Arabic word for empty is sifr, which you can see through various iterations and finally got to zero.
The Arabic language is read right to left and so are numbers. It eventually changed and we now read numbers left to right. HOWEVER, out tour guide insisted we still read right to left for some number and used 19 as an example. We say nineteen — which is reading the nine first. Also in German 75 is stated as fünfundsiebzig. Translated it means five and seventy. Cool!
I’m amazed by the time and energy it would take to make a mosaic like this. Look at the complicated separate tiles and how they are put together!!
Lunches were interesting. They eat beef, lamb, camel, chicken and turkey (no pork, due to their religion) so I ate a lot of steamed vegetables (carrots, onion, potatoes with a broccoli or cauliflower embellishment on top) and rice or couscous.
BALLACK!!
Interesting walk through Fez.
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These kids were adult-less and looking out for each other.
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We saw an old jail cell — pretty sparse.
The Scarf Store!!
I think these scarves have been tried on by too many people for me to be comfortable in doing this. (I like to be the photographer.)
Quite the squeeze.
The leather store!! The vats we for tanning the leather. Normally urine is used in the vats, but it is outlawed in the city, so they use pigeon pee and it stinks to high heaven. That’s why they hand out the mint leaves — to put it to your nose when you can’t stand the smell.
Found out cow leather is much heavier than camel. And the belly of the camel is the softest. I thought Jane’s coat was FABULOUS!! But she already had a nice coat and you don’t use it that often in South Carolina. She did buy a beautiful brown camel purse.
There’s even drive-thru in Morocco!!
And the obligatory stop to see monkeys. Boys were there with monkey food and insisted you give them paper money and not coins to buy the food. (which is more money).
cute!
Everybody loves a good monkey video. Click.
Coffee at most stops for Jane.
Looks like a brown rainbow!
YES! That’s snow!! I didn’t sign up for that!! So glad we didn’t have to get out of the bus!
Snow on the left side of the road and then no snow on the right. The sun makes a huge difference.
Gas station.
It means family, God and King (Or something like that)
They have storks and this is a huge nest.
They have wind turbines and electric transformers …..and then use rocks as road dividers.
This area is Ifrane, the highest in altitude and has skiing in the winter. This was a good recycle of worn out ski boots.
Jim brought little bags of Temptations kitty kibble because he knew the country had many cats. Sweet.
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Bleak scenery. Drove through the Middle Atlas Mountains for 8 hours.
Rocks and rocks.
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Getting bored on the bus!! Phone filters are the greatest.
Oasis!! And a dam!!
Their excuse for the filthy water was that it had just rained.
Our room was very African. Not light enough, but interesting.
More to come.