Whelan's Travels: Morocco Part 3

Fez is, besides the city that invented those ridiculous round red hats, one of the oldest medieval towns in North Africa. Its inner walled city, or the Medina, has more than 9,000 streets, so you basically have to hire a guide to get you through them. Our crappy hotel offered a tourguide service for 150 dirham (about €13) all day, so we got Mohammed, our surly one-armed guide...

and spent a whole day following him through the narrow streets like this...

The Obi-Wan Kenobi robe that he wears is the traditional Moroccan robe, called a jelafa...

There were some lovely things in the market, like goat heads, for example...

And old tiled water fountains...

And DONKIES! Kat likes this picture because she says it looks like both she and the donkey have great weights on their shoulders that need to be lifted. It's a bona-fide art shot...

And this next shot features a camel head, which you will see if you look closely. It was taken around 6 pm during what I liked to call the 'Ramadan Rush Hour' where every single person in the city rushes to buy food as the sun goes down, because they can't eat until it does. Every food service business does all their business during the half hour that is the Ramadan Rush...

Then there as the Medersa Sahrij, a theological school built in 1323. The students lived in quarters surrounding this main pool on the second floor, and sat on mats at the head of the pool, learning how to be imams. It was at one point the most important center of Muslim education in the world...

The art shot with Mohammed pacing...

And here, Mohammed is pointing out the word 'Allah' in arabic...

And some beautiful calligraphy done in stonework...

Part of the deal of having Mohammed as our guide was that he took us to all these 'collectives' where we were supposed to buy something. This one had some beautiful, and completely unaffordable rugs, and the merchant (right) told me and Kat that we should buy one because when we have children and our babies are crawling on the rug, we will forever remember this day in Fez when he treated us so well and gave us the cups of mint tea that we were drinking and was so hospitable that we couldn't resist shelling out $7,000 for a large piece of woven wool...

Later Mohammed stopped and chatted with some fellow who was torturing some turkeys, which reminded me of Thanksgiving and made me hungry...

And we saw a bronze workshop...

And this old dude popped his head up just as I was taking a picture of one of the bigger of the 1,000 or so mosques in the Medina...

Then we saw a rooftop view of the whole city before being hassled for like 30 minutes about why we should by Berber blankets and leather goods...

But we saw a sweet old dude knitting a Berber blanket...

As well as a tannery...

Which smelled so awful that they handed out mint for you to smell while looking at it (note the skins hanging out to dry in the background)...

Towards the end of our Medina tour I decided to get a shave because I hadn't trimmed my burly, virile beard in about 3 days. I stopped in at Absalaam's barber shop and Absalaam gave be the twice-over with a free razor, which was probably the closest shave I´ve ever had...

Shortly after, we were quite hungry, so we went to McDonalds, which was literally the only restaurant open for Ramadan...

Being a fast food connossieur, I decided to see how Moroccan McDirty's stacked up. Naturally, I got the McArabia. It tasted like mediocre kebab. Kat's double cheeseburger was pretty average. But my god, what a meal, overall...

After our double cheeseburgers, we felt primed to check out the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter, which in Fez is incredibly well preserved. Here's me outside the cemetery, which we weren't able to enter because all entrances were closed...

We did see the synagogue, however, which was taken care of by a lady who lived next door to it. It was recently renovated, but there aren't any more Jews in Fez to worship in it (there are only 4,000 in all of Morocco) even though they actually had a torah scroll...