After a couple of days in Meknes, we went to the train station and, while talking to and petting a cat, struck up a conversation with a well dressed man by the name of Rida. He told us he was an engineer from Fez just returning home, and that he would be pleased if we could meet him for some tea at 1800 that night and gave us a shred of paper with the name of a restaurant scribbled on it. We got on the train to Fez, and ignoring the "mosquitos" as Rida had called the touts and cab drivers gathered outside the train station, we headed straight for the towering minaret directly facing the station, turned right, and 1 1/2 blocks later found the Hotel Amore, just as the people who told us of the hotel had promised. (One thing we had learned was that in Morocco, both time and distance were a relative thing, subject to much open interpretation.) The clerk barely deigned to look up at us and check us into a room-an attitude diametrically opposed to the one we had encountered in Meknes-and we walked up the stairs to our room, which was dimly lit by
Medina lifeThe covered balconies where Jewish women could see and be seen from the street, in contrast to the muslim balconies, where they couldn't
one flourescent bulb. Morocco, it seems, had stepped into the 21st century with the energy-saving flourescent bulbs, but they had yet to figure out that one dimly glowing coil was less than adequate for a room 12 by 12 feet in size. The good thing was that there was a balcony of sorts on which we could dry our laundry, so we set up a clothes line and did our landry first thing. We then set out for a quick bite to eat, then off to the medina. We passed the 50 hectare Royal Palace grounds with their beautifully restored walls,
then fending off the faux guides that swarmed at the Bab Bou Jeloud or main gate into old Fez, we plunged into the mellah, with it's uncovered balconies, one of the features that set the architecture of the mellah apart from the muslim quarters.
Following our guidebooks, we passed through narrow, twisting alleys and blind corners that ended in dead ends, passed a bakery where the women would bring their formed loaves to be baked in the communal oven, until we finally worked our way back up to the main thoroughfare. We then set 
Daily breadA baker in Fez to whom the women bring their daily bread for baking
Tired and not a little frustrated, we exited the museum and met up with a man by the name of Ahmed, who was depositing an older European couple at the curb and giving us his card, got us to agree to meet him at the post office near our hotel in the morning. We walked to the outside of the walls and down a large sloping hill. past a veterinary clinic that had an American flag flying in front, back up the hill into the ville nouvelle, and began our search for the restaurant where we were to meet with Rida. After several stops for directions, we finally found what I was sure was the place, in spite of Dan's misgivings. We waited a bit, then decided to eat. After being told we couldn't order pizza in spite of its being advertised directly above our heads, we had a standby sandwich and fries rather than move on, as we were pretty beat by this time.
Rested and full, we gave up on RIda and started to walk down the front of the restaurant toward the hotel when a short, round man sitting at a table on the sidewalk asked us if we were the guys from America who were to meet Rida. A little hesitantly, we said that we were, he told us that Rida had been held up and had asked him to meet us and wait with us until Rida 
Maze of humanityPart of the medina of Fez (one of the Imperial cities of Morocco), the largest in Africa
Rida arrived soon thereafter and after a tea and some pastry including "gazelle's horns" a small, horn-shaped pastry filled with almond paste flavoured with orange water, Omar asked us if we would like to have a beer. Since Dan and I were traveling together and could watch each other's backs, we agreed and set off into the night with Rida and Omar. We walked for what seemed an eternity, arrived at a posh hotel and went down into an otherwise deserted lounge in the bottom floor, where we were served olives, stale popcorn, and peanuts, as well as several 
Tannery vatsA few of the hundreds of vats, where leather is cured in pigeon guano and animal urine then dyed
At about four that morning the prophecy came true, thanks to the seafood pizza, and I was, indeed, ill. Dan went first to meet the earlier guide and beg off, then he met Hadj Ahmed by himself, ignoring my request that he leave a coin on each of my eyelids to pay the boatman, in the event that I died while he was gone, the heartless bastard! He was paid in kind because for the next five hours he was subjected to the typical round of all the different types of shops with the accompanying hard sell at each location, and a very quick, percursory, and largely unintelligable bit of history now and then. When he stumbled into the room and told me his story, I felt a little vindicated that he wasn't sufficiently empathetic to my condition. I tried to get him to wait on me a little more to no avail, so we went to sleep after a sparse meal of bread and water and a piece of fruit for me.
When we got up in the morning, I was feeling sufficiently recovered for us to decide to contact the first Ahmed and see if he was free, which he said he was. A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of the hotel in a battered grey Fiat with two women already in the back seat. Slamming the door as hard as I could to get it to close, we were off, bumping and scraping the underbody with each dip in the road, as the shocks were only a distant memory. We zipped around the perimter walls of the medina, weaving in and out of the numerous women, donkeys rendered invisible by their massive loads, dogs, children, and old men that were using the road, making them jump for cover when we would approach them with Ahmed beating out a staccato on the horn that bleated like a flock of asthmatic geese. As we sped on by, all of us belting out "Hotel California" along with the cd playing at full volume, and looking behind, I saw irate people in our wake, shaking thier fists at us, coughing in our dust.
We plunged down into the depths of the medina in Ahmed's shadow, passing fountains of great beauty,mosques, shops of every variety imaginable, and residents going about their daily business. Every once in a while we would hear "barak, barak!' as a donkey carrying a load twice its size would trundle by, with its owner calling out for us to make way. We visited the carpet shops, and herbalist, a pottery factory, a metal worker's shop, and another carpet and blanket weaver's shop. We also went to view the tannery vats, and were given a nosegay of mint to mask the stench of the curing and dying vats for the Moroccan leather.
Morocco's Flag
Map of Morocco