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On the bus in Fez
Here we all are heading to the hotel from the airport What's funny is that our first big trip while living in Europe isn't even in Europe! We took off for Morocco today and flew into Fez. We took this crazy rickety bus from the airport into town and found our hotel (Hotel Ibis) and checked in and dropped our things. There were 7 of us...Egan, Erin, Joy, Adam, Anna, Matt, and I. Once we dropped our things we went looking for something to eat and walked around town for a while looking for Moroccan food. What's amazing is how many pizza places there are in Fez! We finally stopped and asked someone where a good place to eat was and he was great enough to show us the way. He took us to a pizzaria that also served tangine and couscous so we ordered some Moroccan food and settled in for a great night. Our new friend dropped off his girlfriend and her sister at the local western club and came back to check on us. His name was Abdul and the old man in the restaurant ruffled his hair and chatted with him in Arabic. We don't know if they knew each other or if the owner was just
Abdul and Uncle Bob
Here's a picture of the guys after dinner...Abdul, Matt, Adam, "Uncle Bob", and Egan happy to have 7 people in his otherwise empty restaurant. The owner (I refer to him now as Uncle Bob, because we think he might have been Abdul's uncle) spoke 6 languages and Abdul spoke 5. (Fun fact: Morocco used to be a French territory so, while Arabic is their first language, most people speak French and most signs are also written in both languages). After finishing our dinner and saying goodbye to Uncle Bob Abdul took us to his favorite club for the evening where we hung out with his friends and girlfriend for the night. We had a few Moroccan beers, listened to the most popular Moroccan songs, and got to try their hooka pipe. We had an incredible first night and were happily surprised at how friendly everyone is! I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about visiting a country that's approximately 98% Muslim but so far so good.
Food note: Tagine is a sort of stew and this in particular was incredible. Matt had the Tagine Poulet au Pruneaux (chicken and prunes) and the chicken was seasoned with cinnamon. It's like nothing I've ever tasted before and was wonderful. I had the
Fez Medina
Walking through the Medina couscous with chicken and vegetables and it was easily enough food for 3 people. Matt had Moroccan salad and I had Moroccan soup...I loved the soup 😊
May 25th
Since we stayed in Fez today I'll keep this on the same entry. We got up early Friday morning and headed out to explore Fez. We stored our backpacks at the hotel so we didn't have to lug them around all day and the hotel arranged for a guide for us. We were a little bit leery about having a guide because of all of the things that we read about them. The guide charges you a flat rate to show you around the medina (prounounced med-een-ah) which is the old town and gets a commission from all of the shops that we buy things from, so it tends to drive up the price. However, by the end of our tour I think we were all in agreement that our guide was worth the money. The medina was a maze of alleys and streets and our guide took us to see the rug cooperative (where we all bought at least one rug...Matt and I bought three!) and to the
Dinner anyone?
Yes, it's a camel head...for sale...in the medina. Yum? tannery, which really smelled but was really interesting. The rug cooperative sells the rugs for all of the women who are members of the cooperative and gives them more resources to sell them. They're handmade and the men working there explained the process of rug making, showed us the differences in types of rugs, quality, and patterns, and showed us as many rugs as we wanted to see. They also served us mint tea, which I'm addicted to now! The tannery was amazing. Friday is their holy day so not many people were working but we saw small boys in the vats of color and the smell, even on a non-working day, wasn't pretty. We were given stalks of fresh mint at the door before we went in and learned that we were supposed to hold it by our noses once we got inside. It was definitely necessary.
After walking through the markets and shops we decided to make our way to the train station and take a train to Marrakesh. We bought second class tickets and were able to get a compartment all to ourselves for the trip. It was an 8 hour train ride so we all
got to know each other really well!
Notes: We were amazed, first of all, at how hard-working the people are in Fez. Except for the motorcycles scooting through the narrow streets and the electricity, I'm sure life hasn't changed much in Fez in the past 500 years or so. Also, the poverty was difficult to get used to. The children all came up asking for money and it was hard not to give them everything you had because then you'd be overrun.
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