To Fez and Home

May 6

Today would be an easy day--just up to Volubilis, some Roman ruins, and then over to Fez, where I would spend the night. A measly 113 miles...


It was only a couple of hours ride to Volubilis, through very different countryside from recent days--open, hilly farmland, etc., very pretty:

Volubilis itself is pretty cool, apparently it was one of the most far-flung of Rome's outposts, which is pretty easy to believe. It would be interesting to know what the inhabitants thought as the strength of the empire and the security provided thereby slowly ebbed away--when did they realize that their city, their way of life, was doomed? Here are some pix:


After a few hours at Volubilis, I set off for Fez, which was also only a few hours away. I reached Fez by early afternoon but had a hard time finding a hotel near the old town. I finally found a rather nice one, settled in, and headed out to explore the old city. It is a cool old city, like Marrakech, but smaller, and I was able to wrap up whatever shopping still had to get done. Here are some pix:




May 7
After Fez I thought it would be a quick easy ride up to Tanger, and on to the ferry and back to Spain, only about 200 miles to Tanger. But I chose a rather small road heading out of Fez that looked interesting, and it turns out that the road I chose was one of the worst roads I've ever been on: paved, but very broken, uneven, etc., you can kind of tell from these pix:


And once again the GPS was completely useless, so I was more or less lost the whole time, although I was pretty sure that I was heading in the right direction!


I finally got to the port in Tanger, found the ferry, and met these French guys waiting in line:
Here's my bike waiting to get on the boat:
After the ferry I had to kill some time before Hana and David could meet me at the warehouse, so I had to wait here for an hour or two :-(: