After an hour and a half drive, a two hour plane ride, another 9.5 hour plane ride, another two hour plane ride and a 4 hour train ride, we arrived at our Riad (it’s like a bed and breakfast) in Fez Morocco. We wound our way through a few streets to get there, but once the man opened the door, we stepped inside a very large home with a very large courtyard right in the middle. It had several flights of stairs, each stair covered in ceramic tile, tiny in size. Behind each set of huge cedar doors was a beautiful room draped in curtain, the floor covered in tile. The bathroom was up another set of winding stairs. Our supper was waiting for us as we were famished. We gobbled up the tajine, the squash, the pomegranate, rice and olives and finished it with mint tea. No meal is served without mint tea, it was the one thing I never tired of the entire trip.
The next morning, I think I overslept for the first time in my life as I was supposed to have been up and ready to go at 7. I was still snoring. We wre to meet our guide for the day. We had met a man on the train who took it upon himself to set us up with someone to show us around Fez, probably his brother’s wife’s cousins nephew’s neighbor. We knew we were probably going to get scammed one way or another, and talked it over with the owner of the Riad, and ultimately decided that we would be ok to go with this complete stranger to all of us, pray we don’t get kidnapped, or shot, or sold into slavery. We learned throughout the trip, no one will hurt you, in fact there are dire consequences for that, but they have no problem taking your money. Fez is a very very complicate old city with 1900 winding streets just throughout the medina, pretty much impossible to manever without a guide. Muhammad was not an official guide, and yes he did take us to a carpet shop in which we were stuck for a good 45 minutes, until I had a small breakdown and told them I was not going to be buying a $3500 dollar rug so I can hand it down to my grandchildren for them to sell for millions of dollars. He was a good guide, we learned soooo many things from him. I felt safe and we did not get lost, and that was my main concern for the whole day. He did charge us almost 100 dollars for the day, which is a large amount, but I am alive and I got to see things I probably would not have otherwise.
The best way to describe the medina, if you have ever been there, is like Venice on crack. There are no motorized vehicles. But the donkeys will mow you over if you don’t heed to their warnings. There are streets for food. Streets for rubbish, silver and gold, streets full of spices, others full of clothing shops. None of them modern in anyway, so when I say shop, it’s not like the shops in America. There are areas where people go to sell their fortuns. We learned very quickly that the way a Moroccan lives is so much different than Americans do. They kind of make fun of us for having our money “sleeping” in the bank.
Here’s is how our guide described it: Mamma runs the house. The man goes to work, comes home, hands the money to mamma. She says good, shut up and go make some more, man leaves. (his words not mine…as apparently in Morocco, the mamma’s are the boss) Mamma invests this money by buying rugs and antique ceramic tiles and jewelry. When the man doesn’t come home with enough money, she send him off to sell these things. And then when he does make more money, she will buy some more. And in the meantime, this woman is an excellent weaver herself and she will teach her children to be excellent weavers of rugs and they will sell those too for a huge amounts of money or keep them for the children to sell later in their life for thousands of dollar. The more worn the rug…the more it is worth.
Then he told us to live in the moment, and took us to his cousin’s carpet shop.
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The Jewish Palace: Everything was handcrafted. The tiles were all cut by hand and dyed naturally.
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Overlooking Fez. It’s separated into three different sections. Amazing. And the ceramic Co-op, where we learned about the whole process, from where it starts, to how it’s painted and fired (in a hole in the ground) and how each tile is dyed naturally with flowers and cut by hand. The tables and mosaics are made upside down, by laying the pattern down and then pouring the cement over the top of it.
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The medina had everything imaginable. Fresh chickens and fruit. (sure glad I don’t have to go to the market every day to pick out the chicken or turkey I’m going to eat for dinner. Refrigerators are scarce, so everything must be bought the day it is eaten.) Fresh snail and camels heads. Donkey’s that will run you over. The tannery where I was convinced to buy leather things I did not need.
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