More of Rabat...

As I said earlier Sale is on the other bank of the river and this is where the Marina is.  The present King keeps his boats here and there is a band of cleaners which always have something to do looking after them.  Next door to the Marina is a huge building site which will eventually be luxury apartments  and the facilities to go with them.
The present town of Sale is the dormitory area for Rabat. Together with its own shopping areas and Souk.  In my opinion a more pleasant place to shop with as much variety as Rabat.
     Thursday we tried to find the Palace Gardens.  An easy map reading exercise became a nightmare.  Imagine the scene...a very warm morning building to the usual  even hotter day, and uphill cycle into town and then meandering through the main roads to the site we are visiting.

   When we arrive at the first gate the security man tells us we need to go to the official entry gate, off we go , only to be told that this is the wrong one and we should be at ...we set off again (third gate lucky) and here the police guard asks for our passports we tell him they are on the boat in the marina and that we only have credit cards and our EU health card as identity (which he accepts!)  He tells us to continue. Just 300 metres down the road and a car stops to tell us they want us to move our locked bikes.  Back we go to complete this task  and the same security guard now asks us to go to the office to complete formalities. The civil servant here doesn’t really want to know (he is holding a bunch of passports so we don’t hold any interest  for him) he also gives us directions and off we go for the second time The whole area is enormous with wide roads and hardly any traffic.  Of course we want to get close to the palace and have a quick look.  Unlike other visitors we do not have a palace guide to explain the fact to us—I guess we didn’t need one for viewing the gardens ? So we are watched by : the security guards, palace guards and palace police (not to mention various sundry security men just milling around). No one approaches us so I’d say this is a good result!
 We take a couple of snaps and continue our walk. .  The Palace Gardens are immaculate. Not a blade out of place and many gardeners around doing their job. There are plenty of seats if only the public/visitors knew that it is a public Garden . Images are in Picasa.