Fez is a large city in Morocco. It has been called "The Mecca of the West" and the "Athens of Africa". It's a fascinating place that is believed to contain the largest urban pedestrian zone in the world. The medinas of Fez contain thousands of claustrophobic "streets" no wider than a person. It's an easy place to get lost in and it's a place where my mom and I spent two nights.
My mom and I arrived in Fez after a long bus ride from Chefchaouen. As soon as we arrived, we were approached by someone who offered to be our guide. I was hesitant because I was concerned about getting scammed or robbed, but the guy had a good vibe and we decided to go with him. On the way to our hotel we negotiated the guide's fee. He said he didn't want to be paid until the end of our trip. He dropped us off at our hotel and said he'd be back to pick us up and in a few hours.
The Riad that we stayed in was incredible! I couldn't believe it. From the outside, it just looked like a door in a wall. It could have been a 1-bedroom dump. But after we were let in, the inside of the building was like a miniature palace. This is the Riad and at the time of posting, a night costs $60. A great price, if you ask me.
Inside it was very open and airy. The decorations and flourishes on the building were gorgeous. Our room was upstairs and comfortable. After we got cleaned up, we went outside and met up with our guide.
Our guide took us to an old graveyard that overlooked the city.
The view of the city is hard to capture with a camera. It's so huge and so packed with millions of tiny buildings. In the photos it just looks like a big mass of blocks. In person it was amazing. The call for prayer started up and the various mosques started their calls a few seconds off from each other. It made for a surreal moment.
Then we went to one of the old city gates.
The tile work and details in the gate were awesome.
The area was a large park and it seemed like we had the whole place to ourselves. After getting a few photos, we got back in the car and went to the next sight.
We went to a fort on a hill with another great view of the city.
After that we went to a tile and pottery factory. It was more interesting than I expected. The pieces that they were making looked sweet. The patterns on all of the dishes are different and have such a cool style.
After seeing a bunch of sights, our guide took us to a little place on the outskirts of town for tea. It was a nice and relaxing place to rest and watch the sun set.
After the sun set, we headed back into the city and went to a nice roof-top restaurant at a beautiful looking hotel. Dinner was a great tagine which is a Moroccan specialty. By the end of the trip I would be extremely tired of tagine. It's a great food, but every single place that we ate at in Morocco served it to us.
Tagine is kind of like a stew in a clay pot. It's usually got great spices and plenty of meat and vegetables in it. It's great. But not for every meal.
The next day, we had booked a cooking class. We went out to buy ingredients from the market in the medina, then learned how to make tagine.
The class was a lot of fun and was a good way to spend the morning. After the class, we met up with our guide and visited some more sites. By this time, we were getting a little tired of moving from place to place at such a rapid pace.
We were also starting to see the game that was being played. The guides get money by taking tourists to places where they buy things. The guides get a commission on purchases. Our guide seemed pretty disappointed that we didn't want to visit the tanneries. I think our guide was losing patience with us once he realized that we weren't going to buy any rugs or high value items.
We went on to explore the medinas which was incredible. The place is such a maze, I don't think it would be possible for a foreigner to navigate the streets without a guide. Google maps was an absolute joke and only had about 10% of the streets mapped.
The way the buildings are stacked on top of each other is awesome. And I loved how some buildings like the one above were basically built around the road.
We went to our guide's uncle's house for tea. I love the kitchen shown above. It was a little strange being there, like we weren't quite clear why he brought us there, but it was cool to see a regular house in the medina.
As tight and claustrophobic the streets are, the insides of the buildings are huge, open, and airy.
This kid started yelling at us. Probably for taking photos. Our guide told him to pipe down.
We told our guide that we were interested in doing a tour through the desert. He took us to a hotel where he introduced us to someone who could arrange a tour for us. We thought it would a travel agent type, but it was just a guy with a laptop and Trip Advisor. Hah! He was a good salesman though. I do think he was involved with the tour company and was just using Trip Advisor for the photos and to show the good reviews.
We worked out a price and it was fairly expensive, but nothing unreasonable. We paid him a deposit and he told us that we would be picked up in front of our hotel in the morning.
Our guide took us to our hotel and we settled our bill with him.
In the morning, my mom and I checked out of our hotel and went outside to wait for our new guide. We stood out there for about 15 minutes, then my mom said "You know what, we never gave that guy our names last night". A sinking feeling started to settle over me. It looked like we had just been suckered out of a few hundred Euro. I felt so dumb! I had spent months traveling in Europe, researching the scams and making extra sure that I was never the victim of one. I would joke with the hustlers who were trying to pick my pockets and shut down the ladies selling lucky herbs like it was nothing. Now here I was in Africa getting scammed like some sucker on his first trip away from home.
And then a guy walked up and said "Are you guys on the tour?"! Yes! It was our guide! We loaded up into the car and off we went. We would be with him for the next few days driving all across Morocco. It was a good thing that he was a super personable young guy that seemed to know a lot about the places that we were going to.
Keep an eye out for tomorrow's post as we travel through the Atlas mountains to the Sahara desert and beyond!