Hello guys,

We made it to Rabat today, it was a pretty good trip, taking around 3 hours on the bus. Although it has a Medina, Rabat is essentially one big Ville Nouvelle. It seems to be a very cosmopolitan place and despite the guide books telling us Rabat doesn't see many tourists, we've probably seen more here than anywhere but Fez and Marrakesh. Something else we've noticed here is that Rabat is the only city in Morocco we've seen that has a recognisable black community.

The place is full of beautiful colonial art deco buildings and is laid out on a grid system like many modern American cities. Our hotel is very swish, and just off the main road, Ave. Mohammed V, at the bottom of which are the Royal Palace and the ancient ruins of Chellah. We got ourselves a taxi down to Chellah and had a look around. The Phoenicians founded it as a trading colony in the first millenium BC, then the Romans arrived in around AD 100 and renamed it Sala Colonia. Next came the Arab Merenids who added substantially to the site, before abandoning it in favour of Salé, just across the river, around 1150. These empires all left their marks and there are distinctive Phoenician, Roman and Arab sections of the ruins, the Arab section being the most intact. The remains of a royal cemetary, mosque and several saints tombs are all located around the site. One of the most impressive things about Chellah, however, is the sheer number of storks nesting there. The clack-clack-clack they make can be deafening at times but provides ambient noise which adds to the atmosphere. There is scarcely a pillar or tree in the vicinity which doesn't have a storks nest precariously balanced atop of it, and the minaret of the ruined mosque has such a large nest it seems to be wearing a comically oversized straw hat!

Paul, being a bug geek, kicked over a few loose rocks hoping to find creepy crawlies and was happy to find a huge green and red toad hiding beneath one! Claire also had an animal experience; while visiting the sacred pool where women come to feed boiled eggs to eels (no joke), she made friends with several feral cats, one of whom sneezed down her trousers!

Across the Bou Regreg river from the site we could see Salé, home of the notorious Barbary Pirates (the Sallee Rovers) and the place where countless Europeans were sold into slavery between the 17th and 19th centuries. We also got our first glimpse of the sea since arriving in Morocco, more of which we hope to experience tomorrow when we arrive, via Casablanca, in El Jadida. We're going out for some decent Moroccan food tonight, tajines and couscous and the like, we think we've earned it after today's exploring!

Peace and love,

Paul and Claire