Destinations for the day
On our day 6 we visited two places, one was a Green town/city, Ouezzane and the second was a old Roman ruins, Volubilis. Ouezzane was a convenience stop to stretch our legs as the drive from Chefchaouen to Volubillis was 172 km. Our stay for the night was the town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun which was very near the ruins.
Province of Ouezzane
We had seen some pictures of Ouezzane and it looked similar to Chefchaouen excepts that the buildings were painted green. We enjoyed Chefchaouen so we thought Ouezzane would be interesting.
On arrival at Ouezzane we had a hard time finding parking, we finally found a paid parking lot near the Independent Square which we paid 5Mad.
From the Independent Square the houses behind it looked mainly white not the green ones that we expectd. We walked towards the central market and there we started to see houses painted greens. It was just a couple of streets of green houses. Nothing as “significant” as that of Chefchaouen.
Most of the stores/shops in the central market was closed. We were not sure they were closed because it was already noon or that the Ramadan celebration was still going on. We left Ouezzane feeling slightly disappointed. Anyway it was a good “leg stretch”.
On our way back to our car, we thought of finding a cafe to have a coffee break (and tp watch the town go by) unfortunately we did not find any “appealing” cafe, so we picked up our car, paid the parking charges to a man that would somehow appeared and left Ouezzane.
Ancient city of Volubilis
Site Archéologique de Volubiis was about 90km south of Ouezzane and the drive took about 1 hour and 45 min. The road condition was not as good as the roads we had been driving on the earlier 5 days and there were no highway stop/rest area.
Just when we were near the archaeological site of Volubiis we could already its rows of columns (ruins). There was no sign of a coloessum or an amphitheater which we seen in other Roman Ruins in the other countries that we had visited. We had some doubts if it was worth paying the entrance fees to visit this site.
Nevertheless we still parked our car and walked to the ticketing window to purchase two entrance tickets. The ticket costed 70Mad per person. There were no other visitors but us and since we had plentiful of time we walked the entire ground, reading all the “explanation” posted for each exhibit. There were the city gates, the triumphal arch, the main streets, the basilica, the house of the knights etc etc. All in we spent about 1.5 hour exploring the ground of the ruins.
Volubiis was a Berber Roman city. It was built in a fertile agricultural area in the 3rd century BC. It grew rapidly under Roman rule from the 1st century AD. By the 2nd century the city had a basilica temple, triumphal arch and many fine town houses with large mosaic floors.
The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome. It continued to be inhabited for another 700 years. In the late 8th century it was the seat of Idrisid dynasty of Morrocco. In the 11th century the seat of power moved out of Volubilis to Fes and the local population was transfered to a new town Moulay Idriss Zerhoun (5 km away) and Volubilis was abandoned.
Moulay Idriss Zerhoun
After Volubilis we drove 5 km to Moulay Idriss Zerhoun town to stay for the night. This was the town where the locals of Volubiis were relocated, in the 11th century. This town was named after the first ruler of the Idrisid Dynasty and it was also the site of the tomb of Idris I.
We located our hotel which was next to a messy market place and found after much difficulties a parking (not free) to park our car for the night. Once we checked in and left our bags in the hotel we had to go out for dinner because the dining restaurant in our hotel was closed!
Market place and dinnerWe did not want to drive away from our “hard to get” parking place to dine so we asked our hotel staff where we could get dinner. He told us that there were plentiful of eateries in the market. We walked to the market but just could not find any eateries, were they closed or ….
We left the market and walked along the road till we found a local restaurant that was open for business. Dinner was very inexpensive but not appetising. The local fare was just not my “type” of food.
stay for the night
Our stay was “Diyar Timnay” which we booked on booking.com. The online listing looked good, and it also had a great view of the stacked building of the town.
We knew that the Diyar Timnay was sited near some central location but we did not expect that it was sited by the side of a “messy” local market. It was lucky we found a paid parking at the local market so it was a short walk with our bags to Diyar Timnay.
We had booked a bigger room that came with a sitting room, attached toilet and breakfast for two. It costed Eur40 for one night. Somehow the pictures of the room looked better than how we felt being there. The sofa felt damp though it was not wet.
We planned to eat our dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, unfortunately when we went up to the restaurant we were told that it would only serve breakfast and this time of the year.
The next morning we went up to the hotel dining room again for our breakfast. The dining room was on the highest level and there it had a lovely view of stacked houses of the town.
