Day 8 - Fes

After 8 days of travelling and exploring, we allowed ourselves half a day to sit by the pool and relax. Our bodies weren’t getting any tanner due to us covering ourselves respecting the Moroccan tradition, so it was a whole operation by Anna this morning.

As we fried under the sun, we even ordered lunch by the pool so we wouldn’t miss out on precious sun time. One thing Moroccan’s don’t get enough credit for are their chips/fries - every time we have had them during our travels so far, they have been honestly amazing! Minus that one time Aoife and I had to stomach nice raw potato sticks.

Our afternoon activity was a walking tour of Fes. With so many things to see and do, and as the city itself was so big, Anna found Guruwalk which basically offer walking tours by local experts, and you then pay how much you think it is worth at the end. Quite a good idea.

We met our guide Redoune, a former teacher and Fes local, our tour was fascinating. He led us around the whole city, explaining the different architecture throughout the centuries, explaining the layouts of the houses and the culture of Moroccan families. One cool fact was that the mosaics throughout the city could demonstrate the different eras the city went through - green for the islamic settlements before other influences created a blue colour and so you can tell the different ages of the buildings.

An image synonymous with Fes is a birds-eye view of the tanneries. Redoune of course took us to see this, taking us to Shop 64, La belle vue de la Tannerie, a leather shop who try to flog some of their leather afterwards. Having been given a fresh handful of mint to smell, we looked down on the tanneries as we learnt all about leather and the process.

Our tannery tour was followed by a very lengthly expedition throughout his leather shop, Anna even had a leather jacket on her at one stage. To be fair, the camel leather was by far the best - light, fireproof and also waterproof. We’re now experts at telling the difference between cow, goat, camel, sheep and horse leather.

We followed our guide through the various market streets, each street with its own speciality from the spices and wedding streets as well as the live chicken and slaughtering street to the common clothing and copper streets. Being an academic, Redoune really wanted us to see the University, which was sadly closed now. However, he did take us up to a terrace to overlook the whole city, and into the university which also coupled as a mosque, for up to 40,000 people!

Having been allowed to go to their roof terrace, it was only polite to join the shop owner for some Moroccan tea and a lecture on Moroccan carpets and rugs. We were loving the air-conditioning so we continued watching as these guys kept coming out from both sides with carpets and rugs. At one stage, there were almost 25 carpets laid out in front of us, each story and method explained to us as it was.

Although the carpets were of fantastic quality, and I had managed to knock the price of one we liked down to £340 from £750, we had to leave empty handed. He really was a lovely guy so if you’re ever in Fes and want a carpet, visit Art Gallery Attarine (They also deliver by DHL).

Our tour had nearly ended and we had to now embark on the walk up the hill to where we started. Passing a river that I didn’t even know existed through the city, with boys jumping and swimming in it. People are mad for water here - at the Oouzoud Waterfall, the beach and now in a dirty city river, they all just can’t get enough of it and love jumping around and being covered in shit.

We said our goodbyes to our guide after our 3hr tour and got a taxi back to shower off the sweat we had accumulated. The only problem was that the battery for our keycard had died so we had to wait for a technician to come and fix it.

We definitely got our steps in today and we were looking forward to falling asleep with Ocean’s 8 on the background again! Fun fact for the day: most of the doors in Fes have two knockers, a high up lighter pitched knocker for men and a lower pitched knocker for women, just so that women were prepared to cover themselves or if they even wanted to open the door!