Today was all about Fes (or Fez in English).
Fes is in the north east of Morroco and is often referred to as the Cultural Capital of the country. It has a walled Medina - Fes El Bali - which is absolutely fascinating.
We were on a bus for the first part of the day…as we were staying in. New Fez, we had a quick drive through the part of the city that was development by the French after 1912. It has a contemporary feel, but as it was Sunday, appeared quite empty - it would be nice to see it on a Weekday to get a better feel. We drove to the Royal Palace - one of the places that is housing for the King and his family ad entourage…from what I understand there are several of these in various city it’s, however our guide said the one in Fes is the main one where. Foreign signatories are hosted. You cant see much except for tree tops over the top of a 10 metre wall and some very ornate gates that have wonderful till work and brass doors. We took the opportunity to have a few pics, individually and as a group here.
The Jewish area - as it is known- is just around the corner from the palace and features unique buildings that have cedar balconies, making it a very distinct avenue of houses. Today there are only a few Jewish families remaining and they live in the New city - all those in this part known as the Jewish area are Arabic or Berber.
We then went by bus to a fort on a hill to look back over the city - which is quite deceiving as it is spread for some miles north and south with large open tracts in between…the river running through both parts. It also gave us a great view of the Medina - which is significantly larger than the one we saw in ChefChaouen.
We entered the Medina through gates into rather ordinary alleys and then turned left into the narrowest of alleyways - room for one person in single file …I’m sure it was just for effect but perhaps it was a shortcut. Over the next few hours we were guided through different parts of the Medina…past metalworkers who were handcrafting brass and copper works; through fabric areas where there were weavers and shops with bolts of different fabrics and dressmakers who catered for speciality celebration outfits. In other parts were were passing fresh food shops showing meats, fish, spices, fruits, pasta, preserved goods and then around a corner we found textiles being hand dyed - alpaca wool and Agarve silk using natural dies. Our guide took us to shops - one a textile shop where I bought a silk agarve table cloth (1000 Dirham) and to another that tanned leather where floor upon floor of leather goods from jackets to overcoats, leather puffer vests and handbags, wallets and belts - anything you could imagine made of leather, natural and died existed in this shop and could be made to measure. A leather jacket had my name on it!!!! And was tailored to measure and delivered to the hotel by 8 pm that night! I’m sure I paid a little too much but it was still cheaper than one in Sydney!
We returned to our hotel around 4 pm….exhausted and feeling a little lighter in the wallet department - although we did not spend as much as some :-)
The pics probably tell more of the story than I can put into words adequately!
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