Around The World – Fes, Morocco
My goal on this leg of the trip is to head south to the city of Fes. Not Fez. Fez is the hat, Fes is the city, remember? I’ll be on the hunt for Fezs in Fes.
In the morning in Tangier, I packed up and walked with my bag bouncing down the cobblestone paths to the Grand Socco, then a taxi to the train station. I walked right onto the waiting train, 45 minutes early. So far I’m the only one in the whole first class car. It’s very comfortable and has power jacks, but it seems like they don’t work… And they’re playing a 30-second loop of Kenny G at full volume, even my noise cancelling headphones can’t block it out. A lady sits next to me, it’s her seat number but there are dozens of empty seats, even a single right across the aisle. 15 minutes later she moves to that seat across the aisle but leaves her bag on her original seat and her purse on the fold-down tray. This leaves me completely unable to get out of my seat. Hmmm.
Later I deliberately awkwardly climb over her stuff and go to the snack cart guy. I get an orange juice and bag of some kind of cheeto-like thing. He says 40, I give him a 50 note he waves me back to my seat. I never see my change. This seems common, upon reflection I’ve been overcharged or not given correct change several times since I got here. I’ll have to be more vigilant. The key seems to be keep a pocketfull of coins so you can give exact change everywhere.
I walk out of the train station in Fes, and two taxi drivers wave me off when I give them the Airbnb landmark, it must be too close for them to bother. The third taxi I just get into, along with two other guys. We give our destinations and the driver pulls away. My stop is first and I pay 5 dinar, about 50c for a 10 minute drive.
I find the Airbnb and call my host Rita, she comes back from her University and shows me the apartment and my room. It’s a family with a mom and two daughters, Rita is getting her Masters in International Business and Benza is in Med school. Two thumbs up for smart women achieving advanced education in a Muslim country!
I walk about 10 minutes to where the tourist office is so I can pick up a small map. It’s 5:30 PM and they’re closed, no problem. I’m still trying to watch Star Wars so I look up the cinemas in Fes. There’s one very close. I go there and it’s permanently closed and from the looks of it has been for a while. I put a comment on Google Maps for it. I find another cinema about a mile away. I walk over and yes, I see the big banner! I ask for a ticket and the man says it’s dubbed in French. Spanish and French are very common languages here amongst the locals so it must be easier to get a French copy rather than an Arabic one. Hmmm. I’ll try a different method of watching it later tonight, then watch in a theater when I can find one. Reminds me of the summer of 2000 when we lived in Germany, we went to Italy for 3 weeks summer holidays and saw Mission Impossible dubbed in Italian. It didn’t really make any difference to the quality of the film. It was years later when I realized that the actress Thandie Newton has a British accent.
I found a non-smoky pizza restaurant and inhaled a large quattro formaggi. I’ve eaten so little in the last week, not on purpose, and walked so much that I don’t even feel it in my stomach. I walked back towards the Airbnb and got Doritos – Spicy Pepper flavor in deceptively Cool-Ranch-blue bag, a 2L bottle of DC and a Moroccan version of a big Kit Kat bar.
In the morning I mentioned about wanting to see Fez hats, just to see them for sale. Benza says “My father is a tour guide, he can show you.” I explained that I like to walk by myself but if he wants to show me the Fez hat street, sure. I agree to meet him at the Blue Gate at 2 PM. It’s about a 30 minute walk from the new city to the medina but I decide to walk it rather than take a short taxi ride.
I meet Aziz and he immediately tries to sell me a 3 hour tour, I say no, I like to walk by myself just show me the Fez street. He convinces me it will take 30 minutes to walk there, I give him D 50 and he shows me some things along the way. We walk through the narrow, twisty streets of the medina, teeming with people and tiny shops until we get into nearly deserted streets. He finally points to a door, says “This is the factory” but it has a padlock on the door. A girl walking past says it’s her family’s Fez factory and it’s closed for a week. Ugh. I just wanted to see them in a store, not a factory. He says he knows another one, we walk about 10 more minutes and come to literally a hole in the wall, inside is a table taking up almost the entire space, and a man making Fez hats. They make two kinds, with straw or with cotton. I take a few pictures and Aziz tries to take a few of me but he’s pushing all the wrong buttons on the phone, he gets a video clip, some pictures of himself, some of his hand, mostly blurred. Finally we get one that’s OK so I give the Fez maker some money for a coffee.
I wander the medina, on the lookout for Fez hats in a shop, none to be found. I try to make my way back to the Blue Gate, following helpful signs but discover I’ve walked in a huge loop. I think the signs are deliberately wrong to get tourists to walk through the shops. I ignore the signs and follow Google Maps and make it out.
I walk back towards the Airbnb through the shopping areas of the new city with a really nice park between the lanes of a large boulevard and find a shop where I get a pannini. I’ve scoured the local food places and it’s all meat and/or onions, not a falafel to be found – they must not have made it this far west.
In the morning I decided to go to the nearby small city of Meknes, so I walked down to the train station with about 10 minutes to go. I went to the ticket office and saw about 100 people in line, I thought I would miss the train and have to wait an hour for the next one. Luckily they were pounding out the tickets and in 5 minutes I got my ticket. One boy cut in line ahead of everyone, I gave him the stinkeye and he smiled at me. Wanted to punch him in the throat. Cutting in front of other people in line seems to be a sport here. I got on the train and read a bit about the city. A few big “bab” or gates, lots of mosques, about normal for a small town here. About 45 minutes later I arrived and walked about 30 minutes towards Bab Mansour, which is pretty impressive with its size and the tilework. Directly across was a huge open square that was full of sellers, musicians and even trained monkeys which sadly were not wearing fez hats. It’s Mohammed’s birthday today so maybe people are out and about for the holiday. I went to a restaurant on a terrace above the square and read my book for a long time while I had a big glass of orange juice.
Wrapping up in the medina, I walked slowly back to the train station and spotted a Pizza Hut. They have some kind of special on now where you can get Doritos (standard cheese unfortunately) on your pizza so I had a Tuscan with roasted vegetables and Doritos, I think that evens things out. Good to try once, not really a fan.
I got to the train station just in time but it’s 30 minutes late… The trip home went well, walked back to the Airbnb.
I woke up the next morning, Christmas Day, seeing lots of Christmas activity on Facebook. Messaged with friends and family far away.
I dedided to walk up to the Royal Palace and then through the area behind it today. The palace is only about 20 minutes away. It has an amazing front doorway. I heard one of the tour guides say it was made by Jewish craftsmen out of brass and tile. I finally saw my first Fez, worn by one of the tour guides but he was clearly in “ye olde tyme local man” costume. I’m disappointed that they’re not still part of the everyday dress here. I’ve now seen hundreds of the Jawa people I mentioned before.
From the palace, I walked through an area of open-street sellers with all of their goods laid out on sheets in the road. Then out the back and uphill, a long way. Left turn then walk, a long way. I come to the realization that there is nothing remotely interesting here. Just a big street with mostly closed shops and dirt and rubble sidewalks. I began to worry about snapping an ankle and screwing up the rest of my trip. I stoped to rest my legs and stretch my back and have a banana drink. I continue to the end, turned left back into town and came across a huge store in the middle of nowhere, like a Walmart times two. I continued to walk back into town and spotted a cafe with Egyptian pictures on the front, called Cafe Mumi. Mummy, get it? I went inside and they had cushioned chairs, nobody smoking, and a dozen kinds of gelato, so I got chocolate and nougat and rested. I made it back to the Airbnb and estimated my walk today at 10km / 6 miles. And besides the 15 minutes at the palace, a complete waste of time and energy. Oh well, my first walk gone bad.
I went back out for dinner about 3 hour later, looking hard for something I could eat but settled on the same quattro formaggi pizza place.
Back at the Airbnb I watched A Christmas Story, a family tradition. No chance to make our curry shrimp dip tonight, definitely next year wherever I am in the world.
Planning forward for tomorrow, my Airbnb request for Rabat fell through, of course. There were no Instant Book locations near the train station so I decided to try a standard Reqest again. 20 hours later I heard nothing, then the host replied that he was working on major repairs to the room and could I delay coming for one day. Um, no. This is not how this is supposed to work. If the room isn’t available, block it off on your calendar. Ugh. Wasted a day waiting for his reply. So I did an Instant Book of a place a few km away from the station, will have to take a taxi there.
Fes is definitely an interesting place to visit. Huge medina, beautiful architecture, lively lifestyle, just don’t walk north of the palace. Tomorrow off to Rabat.
