Meknes or Getting Lost in the Medina

One hour of driving North West of Ifrane, the city of Meknes hosts the first royal palace of the current dynasty. This massive complex when it was built during the rein of Mawlay Isma'il is according to popular, and inaccurate local legend, built by 30,000 captured Christian prisoners, whose bodies are rumored to be buried throughout the complex. While the facility was massive, and did hold varying numbers of prisoners from Europe the primary purpose of this massive palace was to impress and intimidate any leader who might try to overthrow Mawlay Isma'il. To emphasize the message of intimidation the entryway that was to be used by foreign ambassadors was placed in such a way that dignitaries would have to walk along multiple kilometers of massive defensive walls, driving home that no power would conquer this castle.
Throughout the castle you could see remains from other cities and castles that were cannibalized by the Sultan when he came to power, as was the tradition of new Islamic Sultans.

Inside the castle's walls we spent a good deal of time trying to determine which massive storage room had been used in "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark" as the cinematic last resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
After the main storage areas of the Palace we were led to an underground storage area that according to local guides was another place where not only were Christian slaves stored there, there was also a secret passage connecting Meknes to Mecca, sadly neither myth was true.

At least the storage rooms gave us a nice place to play a massive game of Peek a Boo.

After visiting the old storage cellar we visited a tomb made in honor of Sultan Mawlay Isma'il, a beautiful resting place for Moroccans held in high esteem.

Our final organized visit was to an old Madrasah that was in the midst of being retrofitted into an internet cafe, but still open to visitors who were interested in what old schools in Morocco looked like. The carvings in the primary education space were beautifully done. My favorite feature was over the entry way to the prayer space a name that looked initially looked like a name.

Soon it became time to go to lunch, Adam, Mike and I spent the two hours left to us to seek out a pair of "Genie Shoes" for Adam. It took only a few minutes for Adam to find a pair of yellow shoes in his size, with that task complete we allowed ourselves to get lost in the Medina hoping to find something to find. What was truly surprising was how we never got lost so long as we made our own path, as soon as we tried to reverse the path we took to find the Madrasah earlier that morning we managed to get ourselves borderline disastrously lost. After a light back track we found a new path that as expected, got us back to the square we had been asked to find. All in all it was a good day, and to end this recollection a picture of a kitten I saw on the sidewalk while buying a Fanta.