A very brief history of Meknes - back in 1672 when Moulay Ismail was Sultan, he decided to make Meknes his capital and subsequently had many extravagant things built in order to establish this claim and his position.
Then when he died an impressive mausoleum was built in his honour, which only added to Meknes' grandeur.
The cafe culture in Meknes is unbelievable. Each road is pretty much full of coffee shops, that spew their solely male clientele onto the streets. Every hour of the day they had a good crowd, but come 5pm until late they were taken to a new level, with zero available seats and being completely enshrouded within clouds of smoke. Now it must be said that whilst we pride ourselves on finding the cafes/food stalls etc. that only locals would visit and throwing ourselves in the deep end, these cafes were mostly too intimidating for us! Just walking past the cafes created an audible hush... So we managed to find ourselves a local joint tucked into the corner of the main square as a compromise. Whilst being completely local, this cafe (a half tent with chairs and a coffee machine) was on its own and not on the road so we didn't draw too much attention to ourselves... A perfect place for people watching and mint tea.
We also found a great place for our morning nous nous with the milk being poured at the table which we thought was very fancy (but that turns out to be the norm in the North). And surprisingly it was the cheapest so far.
On the walk there we discovered a new kind of fried semolina bread called harsha which proved to be the perfect breakfast given we could eat it at the cafe with our nous nous. It's made in giant slabs and cut to the size you want before being weighed and smothered in honey. The price to deliciousness ratio here was ridiculous!
Something we had yet to fall victim to in Morocco was the old carpet shop trick. Apparently Brim subconsciously thought that now was as good a time as ever so when a man in the souks told us "No no no... Not that way, much more interesting things this way!" he obediently followed, to have us promptly plonked in a carpet shop. Don't get me wrong, some of them were extremely beautiful, but we aren't really the carpet buying types. Nor were we interested in "just a small one" after we explained we were carrying all our worldly possessions on our backs!
Meknes is to thank for providing us with another tick on our Moroccan eating list - stuffed camel pancreas. Having seen the raw versions of this in the meat markets (read about these here!) earlier I knew we were in for a treat! We found a hole in the wall (quite literally) grill man who had a gigantic sausage looking thing in his cabinet and after some sign language confirmed it was the delicious treat we were looking for. A thick slab was cut off, grilled and shoved in some bread - pure meaty goodness. It tasted like a Moroccan version of haggis as there was heaps of semolina through the mince, giving it a light, fluffy texture.
We finally sampled Bastilla (a pigeon and chicken mix with cinnamon and almonds wrapped in layers of filo-like pastry) and the local tagine speciality Kamama (lamb with sultanas, sweet onions, cinnamon and ginger) however have once again proved to ourselves that nothing can beat street food - a bowl of chickpeas in broth with a shake of cumin and chilli was far more memorable (we could have eaten about 60 serves for the price of those two dishes!).
Now just to bring this post back down to my level I thought I'd share with you the 'poo man incident'. Pretty much literally that... On our way to see some of the sights we had to cross a very small, manicured park. This park is surrounded by roads, is a taxi hub, has mandarin vendors all around it and is the only way through to a certain area of Meknes - the point I'm making is that it's not a quiet, private or isolated place. Stood in front of us as we came around a corner was a bare arsed man, casually wiping his bits whilst standing upright after laying a turd on the middle of the pavement. Enough said!
In case you missed it - Significant Insight from the Significant Other - Madness at the Meknes Meat Market
