Given that the blog is now approximately eight weeks behind our actual lives, I’m attempting to cover some ground with this photoblog. The chronology is a little out but apart from Fez these three places were our last stops in Morocco and we drove like people possessed to get round them before we had to zoom off to Spain to see waiting grandparents. I’m going to wrap up the Morocco adventures with the next two posts and then it’ll be all about Espana! But for now enjoy these last few piccies (and Rob’s little debut) – especially the ones of Chefchaouen, which was a total treat for a lass that likes to take photographs. Azrou

We loved feeding the monkeys at Azrou but have since found out that it’s not a good idea to do it as the monkeys become dependant on food given to them and forget how to support themselves.

The monkeys lived in the cedar forest at Azrou. The smell was amazing!

Volubilis – Rob I used to be an archaeologist, and while I got tired of scraping around in the earth looking for tiny fragments of pottery, I retain a high level of geekery about ancient sites. I was very excited about visiting Morocco; the place is littered with remarkable remnants of the Roman Empire which I had been taught about at university by a wonderful ol’cove called Professor Charles Daniels. To see them in the flesh rather than on the pages of a dull textbook would be a real treat. However, Selina was super clear: we cannot go to all of these places – choose one. So I chose Volubilis at Moulay Idris near Meknes. The remains of this great Roman city, in its pomp during the first century AD, are located at the foot of the Atlas mountains in a sweeping valley filled with olive and almond trees, and wild flowers. It’s a beautiful location for the south-western outpost of the Roman Empire. There’s some impressive standing remains but what makes Volubilis really special are its mosaics. I have seen mosaics before but it is the concentration of them – over 30 in a 800 x 600 metre area, the excellent levels of preservation, and the ‘upcloseness’ of it al – that makes this place unique. If these beauties were in Greece, Italy or the UK they’d be under glass, viewable only at distance, and for good reason. But here, in wild Morocco, you can practically walk on them (please don’t). For me, the highlights of Volubilis mosaics  were the epic Labours of Hercules, the witty one in the House of the Athlete showing the horseman’ sat back to front in his saddle, and the sumptuously detailed Diana and Her Sea Nymphs. But what I really took away from our visit was just how different Volubilis was from the drizzly, grey, windswept Roman sites of Northumberland, another extreme of the empire, and just how far Rome reached around the world. Chefchaouen