Day 5 – our last day and a chance to see beyond Fez

Monday was a day to venture out of Fes, especially since my stomach had near enough returned to normal – I even managed a fried egg for breakfast.

Along with the two doctors (I can’t believe we never discovered their names!) we had hired a ‘grand taxi’ to take us to Volubilis and Meknes not far from Fes.

It seemed like the taxi was going the long way round, but the scenery was incredible, up into the nearby hills, past a massive lake and through small towns and villages – finally arriving in Volubilis.

As the largest (40 hectares) and best-preserved Roman ruins in Morocco the Roman town is an Unesco World Heritage Site, a designation which is well deserved. I was blown away, and I’ve never been a lover of the Roman period (what did the Romans ever do for us?!?)

Nothing like the Roman archaeology of Britain (which is now all underground), this site has incredible upstanding buildings and monuments – houses, shops, streets, bath houses and mosaics just out in the open. Many survived to waist height, and a number (including a large part of the Forum) have been rebuilt to their original height.

Some of the carvings are in such good condition it’s hard to believe that they’ve survived over 1500 years out in the open – especially the mosaics.

From Volubilis we moved on to Meknes town – the medina was less interesting than Fez but the surrounding streets were worth a wander and we found a café for a coffee and some people watching. Kate was funny to watch as I mentioned Fanta – when I ordered one for her she proceeded to sniff it and take a trip down memory lane as it reminded her of her childhood in Malawi.

The driver had other things to show us in Meknes. The Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail was lovely and we could quite happily of stayed there for the rest of the day. Although a Muslim tomb because Moulay Ismail (the founder of the modern system under which Morocco is governed) is generally considered one of the greatest figures in Moroccan history non-Muslims are able to visit.

At the other end of the scale were the Heri es-Souani, Moulay Ismail’s immense granaries. This expansive building was used to house the grain for over 12,000 horses, and although very simple (not tiles or painted walls) is spectacular in scale with simple arches. The guide kept taking our cameras off us and taking photos of us – he managed to take reasonable photos of all of us with four different cameras – he probably knows how to use every type of camera made!!

On the way back I was brought back to earth as we passed a massive cement works with a large sign shouting ‘LAFARGE’ – work, never far away. Actually I hadn’t thought about work or home at all, I was just enjoying the sights and sounds around me.

We made it back to Fes just in time to finish the holiday off with an amazing visit to a Hammam – a traditional steam room. No photos of this for obvious reasons!!

The guy on the door seemed a little surprised, but pleased, when we said that we wanted a massage as well – probably as he felt able to charge us way over the top! Inside was women only at that time of the day (6.30pm), and we were sat down and given a cup of coffee and some fennel cake whilst the woman dealt with other customers.

We were then told (although she spoke no English and very little French) to strip down to our knickers – she did the same and we were led through to the steam room in knickers, plastic flip-flops and towels.

A reasonably sized communal room with small alcoves around the edges she directed us to a corner and commenced filling lots of buckets with almost boiling water. Everyone around us (women and young children) were scrubbing, filling buckets and chatting. Of course we were probably a source of discussion and many of the children had to come and have a gawp!

The woman started with some kind of brown gooey soap all over us, rinse and then exfoliate with an extremely rough mitt. I was totally ashamed of how much dead skin was coming off – even she commented!! She left me to rinse and then moved to Kate. We both got a short massage – rough but wonderful, and our hair washed. I don’t think anyone has washed me or my hair like that since I was a child and Mum did it!

I think we both would have like longer but it was well worth the money. I only wished we done it on the first night so that we’d have known to go back again, and again!

So, the end of our holiday, the taxi took us to the airport in the morning and by 2.30pm we were at Luton airport waiting for Colin to pick us up.

I’d go back to Fez tomorrow if I could, I loved it. I think we have a year before it’s ruined, before it becomes touristy like Marrakesh and therefore not somewhere I would want to visit so much. At the moment there aren’t lots of Western visitors and you can wander round for hours without seeing any, adding to the feeling of travelling to somewhere completely different.

I’ll finish this last blog from Morocco with a photo of the traditional ‘wedding chairs’ that were for sale just round the corner from Dar Seffarine -

– very posh and becks??

Day 4 – a walk beyond the medina

Well, what a hellish 24 hours I had – by breakfast on Sunday I could manage a little bit of malawi (a sort of pancake – yummy!) and tea.

By now the riad was full, an older couple from Winchester (both doctors and know Roger Buchanan!!), four Australians, two American girls and an obnoxious English couple who only seemed to be interested in tell us about how much money they have, how many designer handbags she has and how they want to buy a house in the Caribbean or Morocco (for a profit of course).

We spent the earlier part of the morning ranging around the medina near to the riad – not too far from the loo!

Kate wanted to go up to the hillside above the medina, quite a walk – but we made it about half way up, and I’m glad we did. Walking up through the medina (we’d tried to get a petit taxi to take us but none of them would – we don’t know why), we exited at Bab Guissa and wandered up the hill a little way – the view was wonderful. But since it was the hottest part of the day and I was not feeling 100% we stopped there (so we didn’t make it up to the ruins on the hill).

Hidden around a corner of the hill we found two young lads laying out the dyed coloured hides in the sun to dry – incredible yellows, fuchsias and blues.

The two young boys loved having their photos taken, and wanted to see the results. I only wish that it had been a little later in the day as it would have been lovely to sit up there for a while and watch the landscape; but the guide book tells that it’s a dangerous place to be at dusk even if the view is worth it!

More wandering around brought us to another area just outside the medina, passed the back of the tanneries. This area, next to the river, where they also put the lime on the hides is a terrible mess and it almost seemed that people didn’t want us to be there taking photos – they kept calling to us and telling us where the tanneries are.

Just around the corner the street opened out into a large area where there seemed to be hundreds of children playing football and women sitting around gossiping. This is the type of area that I don’t imagine many tourists get to, but for me it was one of the most interesting – this is where the people live and where they go when not in the medina.

Back in the medina Kate decided that she wanted some of the rectangular cushion covers and we ended up with mint tea sat in a carpet and material shop just inside the medina. The guy must have got every cushion he had out, including some really nasty ones!

After at least 40 minutes of hard bargaining (and I mean HARD!) we finally settled on 550 DH for five cushion covers (four for Kate and one for me) and a wonderful blanket. I went off to another shop to pay (by credit card as we had realised half way through the negotiation that we had no money left!!), whilst Kate stayed to watch him parcel them up – but she wasn’t watching closely enough and when we got back to the riad and unpacked the package there were only three cushion covers and the blanket!

If I was feeling generous I would say he made a mistake but that seems unlikely, more likely is that he felt we’d driven too hard a bargain and that he would get his own back on us!

I spent the evening mildly panicking about how we were going to get everything home! Especially since at that point Kate was still thinking of buying two lanterns!

As Morocco is a Muslim country alcohol is not readily available, and certainly not in the medina. But Kate and Alaa are cool about drinking in their home and Kate fancied some lager with her dinner. So after a while just sitting in R’cif watching the food vendors and the comings and goings – off to the supermarket in a Petit Taxi.

Except I couldn’t remember the name of the supermarket so we just asked the drive to take us to a supermarket. After driving around for about 20 minutes, and dropping off a friend of his who was sitting in the front seat, he pulled up outside a large shop in the new town – not a supermarket, and certainly not a shop that would sell alcohol.

Luckily I finally remembered the name of the supermarket – Acima, so we got there in the end and Kate got her lager.

The shopping in Morocco is wonderful (not supermarkets!), the slippers are a must and there are so many different styles and colours it’s hard to choose. What is really interesting is what the local population wear. Most of the younger men wear trainers or leather slip on shoes, it’s only the older men who seem to wear the leather slippers – many of the women and young children wear slippers (like the fluffy or towelling ones we have in the UK).

We bought fruit and bread at the supermarket for dinner, but on returning to Seffarine we discovered that Kate and Alaa had cooked a wonderful dinner – Kate couldn’t resist, but my tummy couldn’t take too much. Sixteen of us for dinner, and afterwards we discussed archaeology (the two American girls had degrees in archaeology), driving offences, Sheffield (where the two doctors got their degree in the early 1970s) and American television.

I’d love to say I got a night time photo of the view from the roof terrace – but even putting the camera on the wall the photo came out blurry.

Day 3 – in which Kate ate her way around the medina and I stayed in bed

Well, I said I’d come back to the kebab that I had yesterday – and I did!! I wasn’t sick but the whole day was spent in bed ill (mind you, if you are going to be confined to a room, it was a nice one to be in). I know that I had a slight hangover from drinking half a bottle of wine the night before, but this developed into full blown food poisoning throughout the day.

Kate spent most of the day wandering around the medina – with lots of people asking where I was!! – and sitting upstairs on the terrace. She came back at one point and said that she’d been eating here way around, trying lots of different things to eat.

At one point I made it half way up to the terrace but had to turn back – pathetic!! I only started to feel better later in the evening after a couple of Imodium pills.

Day Two – in which we had a guide and then went wandering

I’d forgotten how wonderful the call to prayer sounds, especially first thing in the morning (about 5am) when there are no other noises (except sometimes a cockerel or a dog barking). Still I actually like the sound, it’s strangely soothing.

Without thinking about it we had arranged for the best day to have a guide around the medina, all the shops were closed up for the holy day.
That meant that we couldn’t be dragged into too many shops and stalls to be persuaded to buy stuff (and therefore a commission going to our guide). We had already decided that we were in Fes to see the place and take photos – not to shop.

Breakfast was as wonderful as dinner the night before – pastries, bread, oranges, cooked tomatoes (which Kate tells me were lovely!), fried eggs, freshly squeezed blood orange juice and English tea.

The two guys who were buying the house were at breakfast, and watched Kate pour yogurt into her mug thinking it was milk!

We had arranged to meet Idriss at 10 for him to guide us around and show us some of the different areas – 150 dir (about £9) for 3 hours. We’d looked at the map and decided that a trip some of the sights outside the medina would be a good way to start – so off to Rcif to find a Petit Taxi. These are great as they are metered, so you know that you aren’t being ripped off – the only problem is getting one before everyone else – no such thing as a queue.

The entrance gate to the Jewish cemetery was opened for us by a very drunk man using his head as a battering ram! Hundreds of white graves in the very bright sun, very difficult to photograph. I got the answer to by question about pebbles on the graves (something I’d seen on Jewish graves in the UK), relatives leave them to show that they have visited and paid their respects recently.Also up in the area was the King’s Palace with magnificent gates, the decoration is so intricate – Mum would have loved it.
Back in the medina Idriss quickly realised that we weren’t into shopping and took us into the residential areas – the back alleyways, often looking like dead ends but always leading somewhere. I have to admit to wondering if he didn’t get lost a couple of times – we’d never have known!
Many of the food stalls were still open, great mounds of dates and nuts – almost begging to be bought. Obviously some of the shop keepers were staying open for the tourists and before I knew it I’d bought a lantern – of course I have expensive taste and it’s a antique, not a modern copy. The haggling started at 800 DH, but I got him down below half that – so got it for about £20! The main problem was going to be getting the damn thing home as it would not go in my hand luggage and my suitcase was already close to being overweight.

Kate drives and even harder bargain than me, Idriss said that we both haggle like Berbers! Not like the American tourists who, I’m told won’t haggle at all. As Kate says, it’s better for their economy if we do knock the prices down – if all the tourists paid the inflated prices the shopkeepers would come to expect the high prices and then the locals would not be able to afford anything. Still things were very cheap.

We had been told by many people that we should visit the tanneries, but that the middle of the day was not the right time as the smell was appalling and would linger in the nose and throat for hours. As we arrived we were given handfuls of mint leaves to sniff, but neither of us thought the smell that bad and don’t know what all the fuss was about! Getting up to the balcony overlooking the pits of brightly coloured pigeon poo and leather it is necessary to negotiate your way through the building full of other tourists, their guides and thousands of leather bags and shoes in every colour imaginable.

The day we visited the tanneries were concentrating on reds and browns – what an amazing sight, I took far too many photos! The far section (nearest the river) is where the skins are treated with lime, the men having to where protective clothing; and then they are left days in the coloured pits and the hide scraped. Imagine that the men that work their have totally got used to the smell and the hot working conditions (being in the sun all day jumping around on the hides).

Whilst I was busy snapping, Kate was driving a hard bargain to get a wonderful bright yellow leather bag for her Mum and a fantastic pair of shoes.

Idriss had begun by giving us a guide price to aim down the haggling to, and he later told us that it was lower than he expected us to be able to get down to – but on a number of occasions we did manage it! My yellow slippers were a starting price of 180 DH but after ten minutes I’d got two pairs (red and yellow) for 250 DH. The fact that we were in the tanneries shop means that we paid more that we would in other parts of the medina but I was still happy with the price and actually didn’t see the same shoes again.

We were also enticed into a herbalists shop, where he wanted us to smell everything! We bought some musk (very naughty as it’s really bad for the environment) and I bargained hard to get a basket (which I love).

Since it was Friday and our riad is close to a very large mosque we had some problems getting back as everyone was spilling out into the streets and praying in the alleyways!

Time of a laze around on the terrace with a cup of tea and download the photos we had taken. Kate was using my IXUS as the batteries for her camera had no charge in them – but the best thing about this was that she could take as many photos as she liked as the camera could be recharged and the card emptied.

We decided that nice though the restaurant the day before had been, we really didn’t need that much food so eating from street vendors was great. A strange patty thing made out of couscous (we think!) and warm chickpeas in breadrolls – yummy! Yes, I know that I’ve always referred to chickpeas as ‘evil’ but these were lovely. I also made the mistake of eating a very nice kebab from a vendor – but more on that tomorrow!

From my experience of Marrakech ten years ago I was expecting to be more bothered by shopkeepers and people in the streets – or perhaps we didn’t notice it so much. Many people say hello and how are you (usually in French but also in English and Spanish), and some of the young lads can be insistent about being our guide or showing us the tanneries or the exit. But a firm ‘NO thank’ usually works (only on two occasions did people get ‘funny’ with us).

We saw a number of large tourist groups, mainly Americans who had been bused in from the new town, they were really being hassled by kids with tourist tat! We mainly had kids following us wanting to have their photos taken.

One of the nice things about digital is the ability to show them their photos!

More wandering around before returning to the terrace for a simple dinner of apples and couscous. The view from up there was fantastic, across the roofs of the medina towards the entrance gate at Place er-Rsif, the towers of at least four mosques (what a noise at about 5am every morning – for at least an hour on Fridays!) and out beyond into the hills.

What is most amazing is how quiet it is up there – not a sound despite the thousands of people below in the medina.

Kate and I were discussing the furniture and décor – when I have my own house I think I’ll be having a ‘buying’ trip over to Fes for decorations, material and furniture. I can totally understand why Mum loved it all so much.

Taking photos in Morocco is fantastic, most people don’t mind and the kids positively encourage it. Such a change from the UK where it is impossible to photograph children (even in groups or crowds scenes) for fear of being arrested as a paedophile. The adults are not so welling, but most don’t mind and also want to see the photo.
I can’t believe I took over 70 photos of the tanneries – more than three films worth. I know that years ago when I went away for a week I would take seven or eight films (often 36 exposure), but now I take much more than that – obviously I delete lots but I don’t worry about the cost anymore.

Kate, the owner of the riad, is an amateur photographer and has had an exhibition in Fes of her photos of the children in the streets – but she has the advantage of speaking a little Arabic (she is Norwegian and her husband is an Iraqi).

A very, very long day – Day One in Morocco

I can’t quite believe that my blog is that popular, but I’ve now had a number of calls from family asking why my trip to Morocco isn’t yet on my blog!!

So, this is the first entry, there will be one for each day, I’ll put a few photos in but if you want to see more they will be on my Flickr photo stream (at some point!). I wrote each day into a Moleskine book, so these entries will be taken from there. And I warn you now, these entries will be quite long.

I’d love your comments (either on the blog or on the individual photos on Flickr).

Day One – a very, very long day! (beginning as it did on February 29th!)

Kate arrived at our house after a long day’s work and the drive across from Liverpool at 11.30pm – just enough time for a shower and a cup of tea. Although our flight wasn’t until 6.30am, we needed to be at Luton by 4.30 to check, and anyone who knows me will know that I’m fanatical about being at airports really early – so we arrived at 3.00am. The journey was much faster than we expected, Colin just dropped us off and went back to Sheffield – probably back to bed.

Mind you it was interesting watching everyone come and go – two women who arrived at just past 3am and started demanding a bottle of wine at the café – only to be told that they weren’t going to get any alcohol as the airport isn’t 24 hour licensed – that didn’t go down well!

I was sure that my bags would be too heavy, not only do Ryanair charge extra for taking luggage (as if you would want to go on holiday with no bags whatsoever!), they try to screw you out of every penny by setting the baggage allowance really low and then charge a fortune for excess.

Airports are perfect places for people watching; like the very large woman stuffing a flap jack into her face, or the people at the bar drinking pints of lager at 5am (it seems that the departure lounge might have a 24 hour license).

People do some bloody strange things – Kate joined a sort of muddle of people waiting to be served at a juice bar, I’ll admit that the queue was not well defined. But it wasn’t until she’d ordered her drink that a man behind tapped her on the shoulder and accused her of pushing in! Get a life!

The flight was non-eventful, but as we were both tired it felt like an age. Given my fear of flying I did well with the brief turbulence and three and a half hours later we arrived in Fes.

And the fun began; the car to meet us hadn’t arrived and Kate had forgotten the papers which had the name and address of the Riad on it!!

After a while of wandering around Kate found a young guy who ‘claimed’ to be our driver – of course he wasn’t! But he did drive us to the entrance to the Medina near to the riad – and just pointed in the right direction into the maze of alleyways and thousands of people!

Luckily I had refused to pay him (we believe that the car was to be part of our room bill and since the cash point hadn’t worked in the airport we were short of cash), so he parked the car and came to find us- then took us to Dar Seffarine (our riad). Thank heavens he did as we would never have found the place, down the darkest dead end alley smelling of wee.

But once we were in – WOW! WOW! WOW!

What an incredible place to stay; from the alleyway you would have no idea of the beauty and luxury behind the door. The building is obviously ancient (700 years old) and has been wonderfully renovated with Arabic woodwork and tiles.

Our room is simply decorated with white walls, fretwork windows (to both the central courtyard and the outside), lovely tiled floor and traditional furniture.

After freshening up we were taken by a guide to a restaurant in the medina (on that he will no doubt get commission from). He wanted to wait and guide us back, but we decided that the only way to learn your way around is to ‘get lost’ on our own.

Lunch was incredible, but far too much – little bits of salad, beans, beetroot etc., then Kate had vegetable couscous tajine, and I had lemon chicken.

Just when we thought that we couldn’t eat anymore a massive bowl of fruit arrived, followed by ‘Moroccan Whiskey’ – Mint tea.

So, we ventured into the alleyways and promptly got lost! – well actually we did know exactly where we wanted to be but since it was the afternoon a couple of the gates had been shut – so our path was blocked. Either that or someone had been moving the alleyways around after we had walked down them!!

I could wander in them for days, there is always something new to see or photograph, different colours and smells. The people rushing around, and heavily laden donkeys being driven through the tightly packed alleyways. People saying hello and wanting to entice you into their shop – “just to look”! Of course most of the time it was even too busy to get my camera out and take a photo – the only time I could capture the alleyways and streets of the medina was in the brief moments of calm.

Anyway, after a number of dead ends and double backs, and being mildly harassed by young lads (who wanted to show us the tanneries or the way out) and shop keepers who wanted to entice us in – we finally made it back to Dar Seffarine.

The roof terrace is a little piece of heaven overlooking the medina, a lovely place to have a snooze – which is exactly what Kate did!

The owners of the riad (Kate and Alaa) were away until later, but we’d been promised a meal tonight with the other guests.

When the sun went down it got cold really quickly, Kate moved to her bed and I went off to a supermarket with two of the other guests (there were five others, two of them have bought a house here and are attempting to do it up – it’s possible to buy a massive riad for about £20,000 but they often have no roofs and need at least £30,000 spending on them).

Alcohol is not allowed in the medina so we had to get a Petit Taxi to the New Town to find a supermarket – where they have a small section with alcohol (hidden in the corner and called ‘The cave’), busy with men stocking up (I reckon there is a bit of an alcohol problem with some as we saw a number of drunks during our stay).

Dinner was totally amazing – breads, salads, veg and wine! Kate and Alaa hadn’t made it back, so Mohammad and the two maids cooked and joined us for dinner. Since Kate had slept most of the evening I left her downstairs and went to bed – very tired, but happy.

Photos of my trip are now being added to Flickr, visit here, and keep checking back as I’ll be adding more.