Flashback Friday

In November of 2017, we visited Peter and Jessa in Morocco. Our visit to the beautiful blue town of Chefchaouen was memorable. 

 

Flashback Friday

On Wednesday night Peter, Jessa, Rosie, and their two cats will fly to Warsaw to start their next big adventure. Here are Peter and Jessa (along with visitor Mary) in November of 2016, during their first months in Morocco. When Peter and Jessa moved to Morocco they took with them one cat and no baby. This time they've increased their cat quota and their baby quota each by one, which is definitely going to make this adventure extra fun and exciting.

Flashback Friday

I like to post pictures of the kids when they were little, but it can be hard to come up with fresh Flashback pictures from that era. But then again, the number of years since they were little far outnumber the number of years that they were little. And even though I have always considered myself a prolific picture-taker, I didn't have a digital camera for most of the kids' growing up years and so I took far fewer pictures. This is all a long way of saying that for today I flashed back just four years, to when Brad and I visited Peter and Jessa when they were living in Morocco. This picture was taken in the city of Meknes on June 11, 2019. I wonder if these two had any inkling that in just four years their world would explode in the best possible way with the arrival of one Rosalie James? 
 

From the Sky: Final Morocco Post

I love airplane pictures and trying to figure out what's below. To start our trip to Morocco we flew into Baltimore for our weekend visit with Mary and Andy. Don't quote me on this, but it looks like this is a northern portion of Chesapeake Bay, identified in Google Maps as the Patapsco River. Anyway, over water while starting to land in Baltimore is as much as I'm certain of.

I don't have any pictures of flying into Casablanca. It was a pretty dusty and hazy afternoon and not very picturesque. But I do have this photo of our departure from Washington Dulles. Our 10:00 p.m. departure turned into 1:00 a.m. But as we all now know, everything turned out well in the end.

Leaving Casablanca we boarded from the tarmac, which is how most flights board and disembark at that airport. Once we were airborne we learned that our Moroccan captain (pilot) was a woman. Yay for Royal Air Maroc!

Taking off over Casablanca we got a nice view of the Hasan II mosque, which we visited on our first trip. If you squint you can see it's the tall skinny building under the center of the wing.

Here's a picture of it close up from when we saw it on our earlier visit to Morocco.

We connected in New York and on our descent we flew right over Long Island, which I don't think I've ever done before. It was so interesting to see. At the bottom of the picture is Long Island. The land on the other side of the Long Island Sound is Connecticut. The eastern edge of Long Island has two forks, and this is the northern fork.

This is the northern and southern fork of eastern Long Island. Montauk is just off to the right of the picture. And that river on the top of the picture is the Connecticut River, at Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, Connecticut. Harrison family members, Mary in particular, will be reassured to know that I have confirmed the existence of the Connecticut River in this location for Brad to accurately refer to from here on out.

Finally, as we were walking through JFK Airport to catch our connecting flight, we noticed this sunset over the skyline. The window was smudged and dirty, but the picture still shows it as beautiful as it looked to us.

Morocco Extras

This is my second-to-the-last post from our trip. I have a handful of pictures that didn't fit in the other posts. Such as: donkeys. It was hard to get a good donkey picture, because they were usually in motion. In many places in Morocco donkeys are a primary transporter of stuff. (In Moulay Idriss because it's so hilly, and in the Fes medina because it doesn't allow cars.)

This is a typical Moroccan breakfast: lots of breads (there are three types on this spread), fruit, yogurt, goat cheese, honey, dates, fresh squeezed orange juice. Oh, and of course coffee and mint tea.

The rainbow stairway down to the front door of our riad in Moulay Idriss.

We took a baking class at our riad in Moulay Idriss. Here's Peter making a kind of Moroccan flat bread called msemen.

The breads and cookies that we made at our baking class!

Moulay Idriss is nestled in the hills. Peter, Jessa, and I climbed through a neighborhood at sunset to get this panoramic view of the town.

Here's the panoramic view, minus the three of us.

The next night we walked up a steep road to get a view of Moulay Idriss from a different vantage point. My fitness watch said we went up 700 feet on the walk.

Here's what we saw.

Nougat is a Moroccan specialty. It's a delicious treat. It was served each night with our dessert in Moulay Idriss so we asked where they bought theirs and we all bought some to take home. It's made in large hunks (foreground) and the nougat seller uses a cleaver to make bite-sized portions. At my book club after we returned, coincidentally someone brought nougat from Trader Joe's. It was chewier than the nougat in Morocco (which is somewhere between rock hard and chewy), but it wasn't that far off the mark. I highly recommend trying it. The flavor is quite good.

I'm proud of our French-speaking son (he can also toss in a smattering of Arabic), who drives in Morocco like a champ (easier said than done, believe me), communicates perfectly with the parking attendant (above) who speaks no English and little French (and who by the way loved Peter and is giving him a final handshake before we left Moulay Idriss). Peter definitely has an advantage over Jessa in such matters, being male in this country. 

While we were off having a good time on our trip, Peaches held down the fort in Casablanca. In a few days from now, she'll board a plane for home. Peter and Jessa and Peaches fly back to the States on Sunday.

We took a lot of group pictures, but it's never enough. This crew (in the Fes medina) had a great time together.

Behold, the Tile

While in Fes we visited a pottery and mosaic cooperative. The sign is so unassuming compared to what's inside. Mind you, this is just a small factory and a retail store. But oh, what they make is so beautiful.

There is an oven (not pictured) for firing and glazing tiles like these. 

All the beautiful hand-cut tiles that are used for mosaic have to be hand cut by, well, by hands. The shapes are so meticulous and I don't know how the artisans who cut the tile do it so perfectly. Well, actually I kind of know, because they showed us. There are patterns of the various shapes needed for the various mosaics that are being made, and each tile is cut to precisely the shape and size of the pattern. All by hand. Amazing.

This is the backside of a mosaic table, still in process. Once completed, the back is covered with fiberglass to keep everything in place. And then it's shipped off to someone who will hopefully treasure it always.

I found this place remarkable for the sheer variety of mosaic patterns, mostly in tables and fountains. Loving tile and mosaic as I do, I felt like I was in a tile candy store. Everything was so pretty, so inspiring, and I wanted it all. I left with memories, inspiration, and a lot of photos. I don't have anything to say about the pictures that follow of some of the mosaic projects we saw in this shop; I think they speak for themselves so just sit back, relax, and enjoy the tile.

Staying in Fes

We stayed for two nights in Fes, at a place called Riad Fes Maya. The four of us agreed that never had any of us stayed in so gorgeous a hotel—not anywhere, not ever. I normally wouldn't devote an entire blog post to something so mundane as a hotel, but the riad in Fes that Peter and Jessa found for us is special. It is simply stunning. (And, we didn't break the bank to stay here.) It's so magnificent that I'm not exaggerating when I say I'd pay admission to tour it. The front door (above) is unassuming, but that's the way many old buildings are in Morocco: don't judge what might be inside by the front door.

Let me start off by saying that these photos won't do this place justice, as I'm not that skilled a photographer. But thankfully it photographs easily. When we walked in I tried to act cool but my jaw literally dropped. This is the (small) front desk and (large) lobby area.

This is the view looking up at carved plaster above the lobby. The riad is quite "small" in the sense that there are only something like ten rooms in total. It was once a family home and was recently converted into a riad.

Upon arrival we were treated to fresh-squeezed orange juice and cookies. This is normal in nice hotels in Morocco, but to be quite honest they should have given me smelling salts because I felt like fainting from shock at the beauty of this place.

We sat here to eat our cookies, drink our orange juice, and gain our composure.

We were constantly doing this. It was hard to act cool, even for Brad.

This was our room. Those floor tiles are all individual. It had a bathroom that was as delightful as the room.

My definition of a delightful bathroom.

Peter and Jessa's room. The short flight of stairs led to their bathroom. 

Their bathroom sinks. Ours were also ceramic, but a different design.

All levels of the riad had corner sitting areas like this. That's tile on the wall and chiseled cedar in the foreground. The mosaics on the floor (and wall) are all handcut.

The hallways looked like this.

This was the hallway outside of our door (which is open).

This is our window, looking out to that hallway.

The ceilings looked like this.

The tile throughout is exquisite. These are all individual pieces.

Inviting tables are set throughout with locally-made ceramics and metalware. 

Although tables were set in the lobby area, we ate our meals on the rooftop because the weather was perfect. This was our table.

More rooftop seating. I can't overstate the gorgeousness of the mosaics throughout the riad.

One more case in point for gorgeous mosaics: this fountain up on the rooftop.

This was the view (of the medina) from the rooftop of the riad. 

Some final thoughts. The service at this riad, which I haven't mentioned yet, was beyond compare, almost to too great a fault. The small staff literally slept on the premises and were at the ready round-the-clock. They made us feel like honored guests, which was of course nice but we all felt a bit uncomfortable at the fact that they literally never went home. But without a doubt staying here markedly affected the pleasure of our visit to Fes. We tried to spend a quality amount of time at the riad as it was such a treat just to be in the building. I'm giving all thumbs up for Riad Fes Maya.