I flew into Rabat yesterday...am staying in a small riad...a bread and breakfast composed of six rooms around a three story courtyard in a house several hundred years old. The medina is the old walled city, narrow streets that cars can not enter, high blank walls whose only openings are ornate, massive doors which lead onto inner courtyards. On a high cliff above the sea just across from the medina is the kasbah, the old fort. Down the hill from the kasbah is the Oudaya Surfing Club, one of whose founding members is the king.
Outside the walls of the medina is the Ville Nouvelle, the new town established by the French when Morocco became a colony. Instead of tearing down the city walls, the French simply built an entirely new city with characteristic broad boulevards, now lined with stores, cafes, and banks. It is a pattern repeated throughout the country...the old city and the new city, side by side.
That is some of the basic geography...now to try to understand what is going on.
