Lost In Fes

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"20 dirhams?!"
Joel and I were expecting to pay 10Dh.
"This is not a petit taxi", said the driver.
Indeed it wasn't - it was a beige 80s Mercedes. I guess that's a deluxe taxi in Chefchaouen.
Anyway, it got us to the bus station in time for the 10am bus to Fes.

Once on the bus, it surprised me how green the Moroccan countryside actually is. When you think of Morocco, you think of clay buildings, heat, and the Sahara. Not that I spent too much time looking out the window - I was passed out for most of the four-hour bus ride.

When we arrived in Fes, the sun was shining and it was warm - this was more like it.
Either from having just woken up, or from leftovers from last night's stupor, my mind was definitely not sharp. Various tourists from the bus started talking to each other in an attempt to work out where we were, where to stay and how to get there. An middle-aged American man approaches us asking where we were staying and it was a good thing he did - he pointed out that I had got our current location completely wrong on the map.
It turned out that I could walk to my hotel and that Joel could walk to the youth hostel - a French girl wanting to go to the hostel overhears us, and she decides to tag along.
Using my trusty iPhone compass, I worked out which direction was north, before pointing out to Joel and the French girl which direction their hostel was in. I then left them to it - Joel took my number in case we could meet later on.

Walking down one of the main avenues away from the bus station I noticed that there were uniformed guards stationed every 100m on both sides of the road. It seemed a bit unusual, but at the same time I felt reassured by their presence - the area around me seemed a bit dodgy.
After walking for about fifteen minutes, the area just didn't seem right and didn't correspond to my map. I got my iPhone compass out and it gives me a different north than it did before. I shook it and tried again, only for it to point somewhere else altogether - it had gone haywire. I guess it was the lack of a 3G network - after all it's not a real compass. I then thought about Joel and the French girl - I had totally put them in the wrong direction. I hoped they were OK...
I decided to walk back to the bus station and start again. On the map, my hotel was on a huge boulevard so it had to be on a major street - therefore I walked towards the area of town that seemed to be the busiest and most built-up.
I still needed directions however and remembered that being a former French colony, that most people here spoke French. So I remembered the words that my sister taught me to say if ever I got lost in France, and approached a uniformed guard.
"Bonjour", I said, "parlez vous Francais?"
"Oui!" stated the guard, with confidence.
"Er...je cherche Avenue Hassan Deux?"
He then pointed me to follow a particular road, mumbling French I couldn't understand. But from his hand gestures, I worked out that I should follow the road until I get to a big fountain/roundabout at a junction. The road going across the fountain junction would be Avenue Hassan II. Sorted.
"Merci beaucoup!"

It wasn't the longest walk but it seemed to go on forever. I was exhausted, had a fever, and my muscles were aching - and I really needed to go to the toilet. I knew what this was and I had heard a lot of stories about it - I shouldn't have had the soup and tap water in Chefchaouen last night.
I finally made it to Avenue Hassan II but I was praying for the walk to end.
A local then asks me for a photo - not for me to take one of him, but for him to take one with me. I tell him I am not Jackie Chan, but he annoyingly insists. Cynically, I keep both hands in my pockets while he puts his arm around me for the photo - there had to be something up, as I doubt Asian tourists are this rare a breed in Fes.
I follow my paper map to the location indicated by Google as being my hotel, but just like Tangier, my hotel is nowhere to be seen. I then look at my map, and then at the street signs - the street signs are in Arabic which is not very helpful. I eventually realise that Google has got it wrong - again. I use the landmarks on the map and correspond them to what I see, working out the hotel's true location about 400 metres away.

The reason I had booked the £50-a-night Hotel Wassim, was because three of my friends were staying there with a Travel Talk tour. I am desperate to check-in quickly but the desk clerk has some news for me - the hotel is full!
"However, when this happens we upgrade our guests to a five-star hotel just around the corner".
At the time I had mixed feelings - I desperately didn't want to walk anymore, but I was rapt about being upgraded to a five-star. I made doubly sure that he gave me the correct location and directions.
So I went straight from a £5-a-night dormitory to a room in a five-star Ramada - rags to riches. And a five-star hotel room was just what the doctor ordered for this sick guest - a stroke of good fortune. I just hoped that it wouldn't be where I would spend all my time in Fes.
My three friends were leaving Fes the next day - so I arranged to meet them for dinner in the evening. I then curled up in my bed, and passed out.

When I got up, I really didn't want to get up. I contemplated cancelling dinner, before I somehow found the energy to meet Sherry, Pratiksha and Lily in the lobby of the Hotel Wassim. Sherry in particular looked worse than I did.
As we walked past the neon-light entrance to the hotel nightclub, Pratiksha explains that her and Sherry's room was located directly above 'Disco Wassim'. That explained everything.
Joining us were a few girls from the tour group, and we ended up at an 80s-decor, tinted-glass window restaurant not too far from the hotel where we all had pizza, which was the cheapest main on the menu at the price of one-and-a-half three-course meals in Chefchaouen.
Dinner time conversation was generally about what had happened on tour so far, and our experiences in Morocco before inevitably turning to the restaurant's easy-listening, power ballad soundtrack. As Boyzone, Celine Dion and Phil Colllins got blasted out, we tried to guess what would come on next and I was right on the money with Richard Marx - years of only having one AM radio station in my Mum's car on the way to school finally paid its dividends.
Most of us then decided to enjoy some shisha at Cafe Bagdad. Unfortunately, rather than letting us enjoy shisha outside, for reasons unknown we had to smoke it in a dingy, fluorescent-lit room with a small TV showing Real Zaragoza vs. Almeria. We were then joined by some more girls from the tour, before another group of tour girls entered the small dingy room. Before we knew it, the whole room was filled with young Australian girls from the Travel Talk tour. I was the only guy in the room with about 20 yapping Aussie and Kiwi girls.
"Are there any guys on your tour?" I asked.
"Yeah, about six out of forty", was the reply.
I decided not to shisha - I didn't really wanna contaminate the pipe. In any case, Sherry, Paula and Lily were understandably tired while I really needed to rest, so we took our leave from the group and headed back to our hotels. It was nice to catch up with friends in a foreign place - I will catch up with them again in Marrakech.

Fes can be divided into two main parts - the ville nouvelle, the new part of town where I have been hanging out, and the medina, the largest medieval Islamic city still lived in today.
I woke up fairly late, but still struggled to get out of bed. I was still exhausted and I could've slept all day - but today was my last day in Fes, so I just had to get up.
It's a bit of a hike from the new town to the medina and you pass the royal palace along the way. There were loads of uniformed guards outside the palace - it is not open to the public and is surrounded by a huge concrete wall.
I then come to a gate to the medina - Bab Smarine.
Walking through the gate and down a mainly pedestrian street with loads of shops either side of it, the street then goes under an old wooden cover, presumably a souk, where there are more shops selling mainly clothes and leather goods. The whole thing doesn't feel very old at all though - it reminded me of the souks in the old part of Dubai. I then come to another gate, Bab Dekkaken and through that gate is the Bab al-Makina, a huge courtyard known as a mechouar and the venue of the annual Fes Festival of World Sacred Music.
I walk out of the courtyard and out of the medina again, towards the kasbah. Conscious of preserving energy given my state of health, I decide to forego the kasbah when I discover it is perched a long way up a hill.
I then come to the "Blue Gate" - Bab Bou Jeloud, and the main entrance for most people into the medina proper. Bab Bou Jeloud is considered the prettiest of all the gates with it's immaculately decorated tiles.
Once I pass through the gate, I feel like I am properly inside the medina - everything is suddenly a lot closer together and everything seems older. The smell of grilled meat hits my nostrils and having not eaten, I was tempted to get some. My stomach thought otherwise, and convinced my mind not to do it.
Walking around without a map and snaking my way through small alleyways, I continually made wrong turns. Some of those wrong turns were deliberate - satisfying my curiosity by seeing what lay around certain corners. After a while, the novelty wore off - I just wanted to find the main sights. Keeping a sense of direction is difficult when all you see around you are shops and walls. In saying that, I pretty much had the Lonely Planet map burned into my mind and I was able to re-orientate myself whenever I reached any notable landmarks. Occasional "you are here" tourist maps also helped and let me know when I was close to a sight.
I ended up in many a dodgy area - I could tell that I wasn't where I wanted to be when the tourists started to thin out. I then decided that by sticking to the the tourist trail, I should stumble upon the sights.
I was still getting hassled a little, but not as badly as in Tangier. They certainly weren't as persistent. But they were still there and keeping your wits about you meant that I could never truly relax, and it really tired you out mentally.

When I arrived at my first main sight, the Kairaouine Mosque, I realised that the whole thing was behind a wall - I would need elevation to get a decent photo. The locals know this too, and boys and men alike approach you about going up to a "terrasse". Negotiating a 10Dh fee upfront with one guy, he takes me into a carpet store and up the stairs. This guy seemed really friendly and helpful and once I got to the top, I got a pretty decent view of the whole medina. He then explained to me everything that I could see - the Kairaouine Mosque, the Medersa el-Attarine (an Islamic college) and the Moulay Idriss Zawiya - the mausoleum of the city's founder. Unlike a lot of faux guides, he put me under absolutely no pressure to do or buy anything, which was evident when he lead me into the factory part of the carpet shop where carpet makers where doing their thing with really cool old-school machines. The carpet shop owner was pretty good about things when I told him that I didn't want to buy a carpet, considering that he had showed me several and even got me to stand barefooted on them to test their comfort (they did feel very nice on my sore feet). I thought my faux guide was pretty awesome for not trying to squeeze every last penny out of me, so I gave him an extra 10Dh, which seemed to really make his day.
Not so awesome, was the faux guide I picked to show me around Fes's famous tanneries. He offered me 10Dh just to get a view of the tanneries, 30Dh to be walked through the tanneries, and 50Dh for both (yeah I know, that doesn't really make financial sense to me either). I tell him I only want to have a view, and he then beckons me to follow.
He walks me through a tannery and it fucking stinks. I think its because they have to let the skins decompose a little so that it can be turned to leather. He then leads me up some steps where I get an aerial view of the tannery next door, and those famous pools of dye. It is admittedly an awesome view. He then leads me into the tannery's store where I can see the finished goods and am handed over to the store clerk. I tell him I don't want anything big, maybe just something small like a wallet. He takes me downstairs and shows me wallets. They're OK but nothing special. I ask him how much they are.
"180 dirhams" he tells me.
Forget it. But he is persistent.
"How much do you want to pay", he asks me.
"Erm, 50? I am a poor student".
"No, no", he says, "more".
"I don't want to pay any more - I don't even really want it that much", I tell him.
"120 dirhams".
"No".
"You bargain like Berber!!" he tells me, rather amusingly.
I tell him that I can walk out of here and that would be fine because I really don't want it that much.
"What is maximum you want to pay", he asks.
"60 dirhams - no higher".
"OK, OK, 60 dirhams".
Man, he must've been desperate. But I still feel a little disappointed into being talked into buying something I didn't really want.
I am then handed back to my guide, who now takes me to a spice shop. I tell the shopkeeper upfront that I really don't need any spices - I tell him I don't cook - but he goes through his routine anyway, pointing out all the spices he has and their culinary and remedial benefits. But he understands that I don't want to buy anything, and lets me go.
My guide then asks for 50Dh, citing that he had taken me through a tannery and into this spice shop.
"But I only asked for a rooftop view - I didn't ask you to walk me through the tannery and bring me to this spice shop."
The problem was, that I was out of small change and only had a 100Dh note.
I hand it to him, and he gives me back 50Dh.
I raise my voice with him, and he reluctantly gives me another 20Dh back - still 20Dh more than we had agreed. I decide to leave it - it's only a couple of quid. I shake my head and walk away with a bitter taste in my mouth.

I then get a stroke of luck - while walking past one of the entrances to the Kairaouine Mosque, the door opens. A guide who is guiding an elderly-ish couple then talks to a man on the inside who lets the couple take pictures of the inside from the entrance (non-Muslims are allowed inside). Neither the guide nor the man inside have any problem with me joining in the fun - although I wasn't lucky enough to have the man inside take my camera to take pictures completely inside the mosque. He must've been paid off pretty well.
Apparently the mosque is huge and can accommodate up to 20,000 people for prayers - from what I could see, it certainly looked well kept.
While walking back towards the Bab Bou Jeloud, I then bump into Joel and the French girl. Luckily they hadn't been sold down the river too much by my faulty compass and managed to eventually find a cheap double room in a hotel not too far from the hostel. It was also a good thing that I bumped into Joel - he had lost the slip of paper that I wrote my number on. I tell him that I was going to find somewhere to watch Manchester United's Champion's League semi-final first leg in the evening and he agrees to meet me later on.
Just before Bab Bou Jeloud is the last sight I wanted to see in the medina - the Medersa Bou Inania, another Islamic college. Non-Muslims can actually enter this one for 10Dh and admire the courtyard and its amazingly intricate wood carvings and decorations. There doesn't seem much to the place other than the courtyard - I think only students or Muslims can enter the rest of the college.

The last part of my sightseeing tour involved walking through the Jewish quarter, the mellah. The area here is a lot different to the medina with many old, four-storey buildings all built and decorated in a traditional Jewish style of architecture.
Halfway down the main road, I am greeted by an old man who seems quite friendly as he asks me how I am and where I am from, just like 34,948 other people in Morocco before him so far. He then offers to take me to the main synagogue. I had wanted to find the synagogue, but I was on my last legs and didn't want to spend to much energy trying to find it - so I agree to let him guide me there. It would probably be 20Dh well spent.
He guides me through all these really dodgy looking alleyways, where the buildings are built so close together that there are bridges above my head the connect two buildings at regular intervals. Some of the buildings are literally crumbling and in most Western countries, wouldn't be considered fit for habitation. The guide then belatedly introduces himself as Jacob, telling me that he was born in the area and is a Hebrew.
We eventually get to a crusty, square, old, two-storey building that Jacob tells me is the synagogue. Really? This is the synagogue? I'm not sure I believe him and am suspicious that Jacob is just taking me for a ride.
He then leads me up some stairs to the roof of a building from where I can see the Jewish cemetery and it's all of the strangely-shaped, white tombstones, which is quite a sight. It is right next to the "synagogue", which leads me to believe that perhaps Jacob is telling the truth. He tells me that they are restoring the synagogue and that they would appreciate a "restoration donation" of 100Dh. I tell him I can't give him that much and end up giving him 20Dh. He begrudgingly accepts my "donation" and is no longer as friendly as he was when I first met him, although he is kind enough to lead me back through the alleyways towards the main street. He was not happy.
After getting a little lost in the Bou Jeloud Gardens, I am finally on the main boulevard back to the hotel. I am now starving but still with little appetite. Every muscle in my body is aching and the last, final walk back to the hotel is agonisingly slow, but I cannot walk any faster. Relief was the overwhelming emotion once I got into my hotel room - but I didn't have long to rest as it was now only 45 minutes until kick-off.
Luckily I didn't have too far to walk - it was back to Cafe Bagdad.

Cafe Bagdad doesn't have any alcohol so rather than ordering a beer, I ordered some mint tea as I settled into a seat to watch the game. I then joined by Joel and the French girl, Pauline. They inform me that the King of Morocco is in town, as part of a countrywide tour, which explains all the guards that I had seen over the last two days. Joel is a good guy to hang out with, very easy-going. Pauline seemed very nice too.
United are absolutely battering Schalke and it is a miracle that the score is still 0-0 at half-time. Manuel Neuer, the Schalke keeper is playing a blinder and I am worried that it will be one of those nights. We have to make sure we score while we're on top.
At half-time we move up into the dingy shisha room for some grape shisha, which was apparently the better flavour according the girls last night - it was pretty good. This is the Moroccan football-watching experience - with mint tea and shisha rather than with beer in a pub.
United continue to batter Schalke in the second half and finally their resistance is broken by Giggs and then Rooney in quick succession. The team seem to settle for the scoreline for the last twenty or so minutes - 2-0 away from home is an awesome result and we now have one foot in the final at Wembley. It was a completely deserved result too - we completely dominated them.
After the game, Pauline decides to head back her hotel as she has an early start the next day - I now just have to eat something and Joel joins me for a disappointing Puerto Rican tuna and ham wrap in a cheap kebab cafe near the Ramada. We are both bound for Casablanca next although Joel is unsure when exactly he'll get there - his schedule is completely flexible. I however, am leaving the next morning and head back to my five-star hotel room for some much needed rest.

Beslama,
Derek

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Photos

Tanneries
The famous pools of dye.

Streets Of Fes #1
An entrance to a mosque.

Bab Bou Jeloud
The "blue gate" is Fes's most revered.

Fountain Junction
Junction on Avenue Hassan II near my hotel.

Streets Of Fes #2
Typical street in the medina.

Streets Of Fes #3
Some lovely architecture.

Streets Of Fes #4
More funky architecture.

Souk
Undercover market.

Bab Dekkaken
Taken from Bab al-Makina, huge courtyard where they hold the annual Fes Festival of World Sacred Music.

Lantern Shop
It was unsurprisingly well-lit inside.

Moulay Idriss Zawiya
Mausoleum of the Moulay Idriss II who founded Fes in 810.

Carpet Making
Carpet maker doing his thing, with his old-school tools.

Leather Shop
The finished goods and where I was talked into buying a wallet I didn't really want all that much.

Inside Karaiouine Mosque
I was lucky enough to be able to get a glimpse inside the Muslim-only mosque.

Detail
The carvings inside the Medersa Bou Inania were very intricate.

Jewish Balconies
Architecture in the mellah.

Jewish Cemetery
I found the shape of the tombstones quite interesting.

Bou Jeloud Gardens
Not the best kept park I have ever been to but the natural surrounds provide respite from the hustle and bustle of the medina.

Snails
Used in preparation of snail soup. I wasn't about to try.

Foot Traffic
The locals still used horses and donkeys to get their good through the narrow streets of the medina.

Karaiouine Mosque
The largest mosque in Africa. The university within it is claimed to be the oldest in the world.

Rooftop View
Looking across Fes.

Big Wheel
Inside a tannery.

Chicken Cages
This is how you know the chicken is fresh.

Medersa Bou Inania
Courtyard inside the college.

Imam Malik Mosque
Mosque in the ville nouvelle near the train station.