Kate and I wake up early and decide to explore the Ville-Nouvelle. Leaving our hotel on this brisk morning, we head to the city center and find the streets mostly deserted. We arrive at Avenue Hassan II and are met by a broad boulevard with majestic palms bordering reflecting pools and fountains filling the medium between the roadways, lattices and arches of lights strung overhead. The sun is up but we share the city with only a few people rushing along the mostly empty streets. Consulates and government buildings are among the hotels, boutiques and restaurants along the Avenue. After our quick look around we return to the hotel to join the others for breakfast, after-which we load into Abdul's once again immaculate van to explore the old city.
Sooner than expected we roll up to the Royal Palace and exit the van. We wander the plaza outside the palace gates and take pictures with the countless other tourists mobbing the square. I soon find it is illegal to take pictures of the Royal Guard as I'm rushed by armed guards who ask me to delete the pictures I took of them from across the plaza. I reluctantly return to photographing the empty gates, fountains and palms. The Royal Palace is situated just outside Fez's famed Medina and we again load into the van for the short drive to the Semmarian Gate, where we enter the souk. The Fez Medina has about 11,000 streets and all seem filled with people, donkey carts, scooters & bikes and vary in size from a motorway to an ally that is not wide enough for two people to pass. Spices, leather goods and foods of all sorts, lamps, music & instruments are but a few of the wears for sale and all hawked at "Berber Prices", seemingly to make the unwary believe he will receive a "local’s price". We detour from the main thoroughfare into the Madrasa Bou Inania, or Quaranic school and are amazed at the intricate detail everywhere within the school. For a society that doesn't depict representational art the intricate work on every surface from the floors to the walls to the doors are beautifully amazing. The schools are laid out somewhat similarly to a riad, with a central courtyard, either open or closed to the sky with a central water feature, and rooms around the periphery and usually more than one story high.
After touring Fez's Medina a little further, we make our way back to the van and drive up a precipice overlooking the Medina and gain an understanding of exactly how large and dense the Medina actually is. It appears as a mostly white city with minarets randomly reaching skyward from all around the city, the streets so narrow it looks like the buildings are pushed together. Reloading into the van we soon arrive at a pottery co-op. Our tour begins with tile cutters chipping the handmade tiles not only into different shapes, but chipping the glaze skin off the tiles to reveal different patterns. We then learn from craftsmen how the tile are made, glazed and fired, then how they're made into fountains, tables and other works of art. We then observe the potters at work turning tagines, glasses and other goods as well as glaziers painting intricate details onto the pottery. Finding ourselves in the shop, Kate and I decide to buy a tagine, even though we realize it may not be the easiest purchase for two lightweight travelers to carry around the country and onward to home. We're then whisked back to the Medina to get lunch and finish our tour.
Arriving at another gate, we re-enter the souks and are again passing markets, we taste indigenous fruits and other exotic foods that I can't begin to name, as well as more familiar fare like dates. Heading for lunch we walk down narrow hallways, and then make our way up many stairs before arriving at our cafe. We find ourselves in a lime green room about thirty feet square with a large skylight overhead. Pushing many smaller tables together we then sit as a group for lunch. At each meal the menu is mostly familiar though the surroundings are different; couse-couse, tagine or brochettes (skewers of grilled meat) and frites (fries). Though it seems the menus are identical we find the foods are prepared very differently and each region has it's specialty. We finish lunch and are again on the busy streets of the souk. Our tour carries us into another Quaranic school before we visit the famous Fez Tanneries. We enter a building and climb some steps, then we climb more narrow steps, then we again climb some steps before emerging in a leather shop. We find shelves filled with leather goods; shoes of every color, purses, wallets and foot stools and on the opposite side is a balcony overlooking the tanneries. The smell, though not pleasant, is not near as overpowering as I had imagined it would be. There are many men working the leather and we note the white tubs where the hides are worked into leather and many different colored tubs where the leather is dyed. All around hides are stretched out over the surrounding roof tops to dry in the sun. Climbing more steps we find a maze of coats and jackets and many eager salesmen offering bargains, but we leave empty handed. Descending the cascade of steps delivers us to Fez's busy streets again.
Mohamed carries us to a homeopathic pharmacy where the proprietor offers us samples of many indigenous remedies for everything from snoring, to cold and digestive ills, to impotence; I'm guessing we didn't make a good first impression with him. We then are led to a cloth weaver where we watch craftsmen at work and pick out our head wear for our upcoming trek into the desert. We're soon at another co-op of carpet merchants and get our introduction to Moroccan hard sell and are again offered "Berber Price". Although several in our group buys some rugs, the shopkeepers are disappointed to find most of us leaving empty-handed. As we empty out of the Medina from the opposite gate from the one we entered, we find Cam and Nicole are not finished exploring Fez and opt to return to the souks as we load into Abdul's van. Returning to the hotel, Mohamed offers us a choice for dinner; a modest Moroccan dinner in the Ville-Nouveau or a more expensive visit to a family-owned riad within the Medina, we choose the riad. We refresh ourselves in our rooms, visit the liquor store across the street from our hotel and enjoy some cold beer in the hotel lobby as the group slowly reunites. Feeling refreshed we overcome the social inertia and load into Abdul's van.
The sky is clear, the full moon is out and the temperature very comfortable. We drive back to the Medina, park and have a pleasant stroll through Fez's streets to the riad. After walking through dark and narrow alleys lined by non-descript buildings we arrive at our destination. We enter a beautifully decorated central courtyard with a central fountain and seating, a detailed ceiling two floors up protects the courtyard from the elements. Our hostess leads us to our dining room, through an arched entryway we find a long rectangular room with a large table bordered by overstuffed benches at either end. We place our drink orders and receive our drinks with the first course of salad. A second course of harerra (a creamy Moroccan vegetable soup) follows and by the fourth course we start to learn, too late, that more courses will follow. After enjoying tagine and couse-couse we finally have our dessert, orange slices and cinnamon which is refreshing after all the spices of the main courses. Following dinner our host offers us a tour of the riad and tells us how his family has spent years restoring the riad from its former dilapidated state. The detail is unbelievable as we observe even the wood screens are intricately painted in multi-colored patterns. We are then led up to the roof-top deck overlooking the medina with a full moon overhead and the ancient city spread out all around us. Finding it hard to break away from the riad, we return to our modest hotel in the Ville-Nouvelle and rest up for our journey skirting the Middle Atlas Mountains tomorrow.
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