Our 7am wake up came at 6:30am!!! So we had an extra half hour before we had to leave for our city panorama tour (bus ride around town) and our visit to the Medina.   (and someone rang our room by mistake sometime after 11pm last night!! )

We saw lovely blue sky today, not sure if it was because it was Sunday and there were less cars on the road or that most factories were shut, or just the weather, but there was no smog or haze and the sky was a beautiful colour, Moroccan blue!

The bus ride was ok, we drove through the three districts of town, the new or French area, the Old district and the Jewish district (although there is no longer any sizable Jewish population). Our first stop was the Royal palace of Fez. We couldn’t go inside, the Princess was in residence and her husband the King Mohammed  VI. We had the opportunity to admire the scale and  workmanship of the Front Door to the Palace and were given permission to photograph the 3 guards on duty in front of it. They were from three different arms of the police, one was a Royal Guard in a white uniform, a civil policeman in a blue uniform and an armed services policeman in green. There was a side door some distance from us that we were told was the service entrance and not to photograph it.  

We got back on the bus and stopped at a look-out and had a photo opportunity over the medina. It was an amazing sight, I guess it was what I had always considered was quintessentially Morocco. Thousands of off-white building all crowded together within a fortress wall, the stuff movies are made of!! The Medina is over 12oo years old and has retained its current population of about 250,000 for over 20 years. There are no cars or automated transport within the Medina, it is all either by foot or mule/donkey!! (And you have to watch where you step because of that!! ).

 We were given a little advice before we entered the Medina. Number one, DO NOT photograph the police in blue uniforms, no explanation, just don’t!! Number two, if you lose our tour group DO NOT attempt to find it, stay put right where you are. The Medina has over 15000 streets and is literally a maze of seemingly identical streets and stalls. It could take days to get out if you got lost, or so the story goes!!!

We entered the Medina and it was not too crowded. At first it looks like any other market in Morocco, but that image is soon dispensed with the first donkey going past loaded to the hilt with goods of various forms and when you pass your first butcher shop. The butchers have all sorts of goodies for sale, from camels feet, steak and other bits, to goat and many other sorts and cuts of meat. There is seafood of almost all description and shops selling fresh chickens (I mean they pluck it for you on the spot fresh). The crafts on sale are pretty well anything you could think of, and most of it seems to be made within the Medina. We visited a tannery, where we were all offered mint to put under our noses to hide/cover the smell. It was fascinating watching the tanners at work, from liming fresh skins to removing the fur/wool, cleaning the skins and the dying and drying them. After that we went to a leather goods shop to see the finished products and be tested by the persistent sales people. We also saw what we have been told is the oldest University in North Africa, it was set-up in the Medina in the 1200’s by a woman and has been running ever since. We were taken to a carpet salesroom, where we were told the many differences and qualities of the various rug/carpets on sale. One rug Deb liked, it was about 3m x 2.5m, and very intricate and colourful was priced at 6800 euro. We also saw a mosque, we couldn’t go in, and our final stop was a weaving factory, where they made cloth and manufactured garments. We finished our visit to the Medina there. On the way out, very near the bus I succumbed and bought a traditional Moroccan garment from a street guy!!

In the afternoon we took an optional tour up to a hillside village where some of the inhabitants live in caves (their houses are part cave and part normal), the cave sections were very cool and stayed at an even temp all year round. We were shown around by an old guy named Mohammed, and we were taken to his house , a cave house, as part of the tour. He had a great sense of humour and made us all feel welcome. The women of the village work making buttons for the traditional dress and the men work in various forms of agriculture. The village was a really interesting insight into the daily lives and living conditions in the outlying villages.

From there we went to a ceramic factory where they make tiles for the mosaics and many other forms of pottery from plates to Tagines, all hand painted. When we arrived there were great billowing clouds of black smoke coming out of the factory. Our guide said this wasn’t air pollution, but just smoke from the Olive Husks they burn to fire the kilns.  I think they were mixing a little diesel in with the husks, and it definitely was air pollution!! You should have smelt our clothes when we got back to the hotel. So bad we had to wash them all, and that’s not good when you have to pack everything up for travel the following morning. Anyway, we wouldn’t have missed either visit. We, Deb, bought a small Blue glazed jug from the ceramic place as a memento of Fes, blue is the colour of Fes.

We get to put our clocks forward an hour tonight so we will only be 8 ½ hours behind Adelaide.   Not only do we lose an hours sleep but we are getting a wake up call at 6am, we have to have our bags outside our door by 6.30am and on the bus at 7.30am.   

And that is pretty much the end of our touring day, tomorrow night we are going by Jeep into the Sahara  then by camel to watch the sunset, I am really looking forward to being in the Sahara, so think of us on your first day of winter in the desert!   

love to all, us xoxox.