Adventure in Fez!

The first part of the adventure of Fez is getting there. (We had a ridiculously easy time of it this time.) The first thing you do is walk past the marché to the grand taxi station. Just say "Fez?" to the drivers you see leaning against their white cars, and they'll point you in the right direction. Walk to the guy shouting "Fez! Fez! Fez!" If he already has enough passengers waiting in the car, you can simply pay him 25 dirhams (just under $3), get in with the five other passengers, and go.

It's worth mentioning here that the "grand" in "grand taxi" refers to the "grandness" of the distance the taxi travels, not to the size of the taxi. These drivers put four passengers in the back and two in the front, even though that many bodies really do not fit. I now understand why so many westerners pay for two seats for themselves!

If you are lucky, as we were, the driver will get you to the grand taxi station in Ville Nouvelle, Fez, safely. You can then hail a red petit taxi and ask the driver to take you to Bab Boujloud, the main entrance into the medina of Fez El Bali, or old Fez. Because we got there in the morning, outside Bab Boujloud were quite a few guides, both official and unofficial, offering their services. We turned down a nice man who happened to be an official guide. Later in the day we questioned whether that had been a mistake.

Bab Boujloud

I need to say a little about Fez here. It is an ancient city, almost unimaginably ancient to me as an American. Fez was founded by Moulay Idriss I, who died in 792, and his son, Idriss II, made the city his capital and developed it further. When I say that Fez El Bali is old, then, I mean old, and this manifests in the narrow, labyrinthine, claustrophobic passageways of the medina. 

There are two main roads through the medina--Talaa Seghira, the lower road, and Talaa Kebira, the higher one. Winding up and down, back and forth, between and around them are smaller roads and passageways. Even the main roads are too narrow for normal vehicles, and all traffic through the medina is on foot, donkey, bicycle, cart, or (less usual) motorbike.

Me and Kian, who went with us on our Fez adventure.

One reason to occasionally take one of the smaller roads is to get away from the crowds!

When you enter the medina, prepare to have a variety of services and products offered to you. Eat at our cafe here. Come upstairs and see my perfumes--just look! You don't have to buy! This way to the...whatever. Children constantly walk next to you asking, "What do you need?" Many of these people were easy to turn down with a smile and a "la, shukran" ("no, thank you"), but one man near the entrance, and later some teenage boys, got a little belligerent (which in itself is a sales tactic).

I tried to enter with an appreciation for people's tactics. What many people seem to do is just attach themselves to a foreigner and start walking. Where are you from? My name's Faisal. Welcome, brother, to Morocco! They might start giving you a little history about Fez, or pointing out where something is. If you stop to look at something in a shop, they'll walk a little farther on and then join you when you emerge. The brilliance of this tactic is that it's very difficult to get rid of the person. If he came out and said, "Do you need a guide?" we could turn him away with a "no, thanks."

We wandered a short way down Talaa Segira and then went back up to meet a couple of French women for lunch at Cafe Clock, on Talaa Kebira. (They were not two random French women, but teachers at a grade school/high school here in Ifrane that is associated with the University.)

I loved Cafe Clock. The menus and service are in both English and French, and vegetarian menu items are marked with a "V." The cafe is funky and nothing like anything you might see in the U.S. It's three floors talls, and if it hadn't been so hot, I would have loved to eat on the roof with a view of the medina.

Three of us had the hummus, falafel, and tabbouleh plate. T had a chicken and couscous dish which he said is the best thing he's had in Morocco thus far.

After a leisurely lunch, we went back out of Bab Boujloud to try to find a guide, as Kian was dangerously close to punching Faisal (yes, we encountered such a person) in the face if we went back down Talaa Segira and saw him again (as we were sure to do). The only official guide outside the gate was asking for 200 dirhams from us and another 200 dirhams from a second group who would go on the tour with us. We knew the going rate was 150 no matter how many people go, so we turned him down. (His claim that he charged more because he is an "international guide" made no sense to us. This was not our first or last confusing explanation of why someone was asking an inordinate amount of money from us.)

We decided to be our own guides, and we based our wanderings almost entirely on avoiding Faisal. We eventually found the one thing I'd wanted to see, the Medersa Bou Inania, which dates back to the 14th century. It was a quiet refuge from the hassles of the medina.

Notice the stained glass windows in this room.

Life in Morocco is hard for cats, but the Medersa cats looked pretty content. (I took this picture for you, Deepthi.)

One consequence of our avoidance of Faisal was that we walked past some of the same shops several times, and we finally took up an individual named Abdul on his offer to show us some "real" tanneries and weaving. He said the magic phrase, "Have some tea with us." We had all read that you have to do this. I have to admit, though, that I got increasingly nervous as Abdul led us through ever more winding and narrow passageways--left, right, another right...or was it another left? Oh, great, I have no idea where we are. 

But he did, in fact, lead us to a spot that appeared to be a small tannery. And oh, the smells! Not just of the "herbals" that the tanners were smoking on their break, but also the indescribably horrible animal and chemical smells made me weak and dizzy.

The 10 dirhams each we had to pay were worth it, though, when he took us to the top of a hill outside of the medina, where we had a breathtaking view of it and much of Fez.

No wonder people get lost in there.

Next, Abdul took us to his family's weaving room, where we were served mint tea and an excellent sales pitch. Luckily, his beautiful (and they were breathtakingly beautiful) rugs were far beyond anything we could pay at that time.

We emerged from the medina late in the afternoon, exhausted and dehydrated. We had been bombarded with sensory images all day--smells of perfume, hashish, and raw meat; sounds of children walking along beside us, loudly singing and playing musical instruments; sights like that of a legless and armless man sitting quietly on the cobblestone, patiently waiting for a few dirhams from passersby; the heavy sweet taste of mint tea ("Moroccan whiskey" as Abdul called it); the distinct feel of woollen Berber rugs, both rough and soft at the same time. 

It took us a while to catch a petit taxi, but we finally did and had the driver take us to the Ifrane grand taxi station, where we were told it would cost 400, then 350, then 250 dirham for a taxi back to Ifrane (it should only have cost 150). We waited for our French ladies and finally got a taxi for 50 dirham each. We were too exhausted to care if we were still getting ripped off.

The sun set as we rode back, and in the increasing dark I could see people everywhere--sitting in the light rain in the apple orchards, walking along the road, riding donkeys and motorbikes. It was a great relief to get out of the taxi in downtown Ifrane, knowing that no one would ask if we needed a guide. We went to the Chamonix Restaurant and begged them to serve us some beer. We had beer and pizza in Ifrane, watching people walking outside in the rain, and I just barely, just a little bit, started to feel like I was home.