Fes

After a beautiful ride through the Atlas Mountains, covered with snow, we arrived in Fes, the oldest of the Imperial cities.

Although it rained throughout most of our stay, we got to go around and see a lot. We met Mohamed, a young local guy who works in a carpet cooperative and he not only gave us a tour of his place of work but also showed us the city, its bars and through him we learned a lot about the Arab world.

Mohamed helped us hire a guide that took us to a beautiful view point in the outskirts of Fes, from where we could see the city from above. Although they claim that Fes is home to about 1 million people, looking at it from above you can see how the city´s expanding population is spreading to the hillsides north and south of the city.

Fes el-Bali (Old Fes) is the most interesting area for visitors and the largest living Islamic medieval city in the world. It is definitely an assault to the senses with its 90,000 streets, 40,000 dead ends, hundreds of shops (food stalls, fruit shops, butcher shops, silk shops, carpet shops and so much more). We spent a whole day walking around and visited many of them.

We went to a carpet shop where we were shown the differences among the carpets of the different tribes that make them, we visited mosques, tile shops, silk cooperatives, a traditional Berber pharmacy and the tanneries.

The tanneries are one of the most important views and strongest smells of the city. Walking up the narrow streets we got to the leathermaking part of town. Even narrower stairs take you to a second or even third floor where a terrace view displays workers with rubber boots moving pieces of leather and soaking them in different pools full of dyes. Smells are pretty strong, a mix of leather, animal feces, blood, natural dyes such as saffron and other flowers, so the shopkeeper makes sure to give you a few mint leaves that can be kept close to your nose.

Fes was a very interesting city which we were able to enjoy despite the bad weather. The temperatures were low and the rain was constant. We tried to see everything we wanted to see in a few days and we got to socialize quite a bit through Mohamed and his friends. But we were ready to move into a much mellow place and we had to continue moving north.

We realized we were leaving on the last day of some national holidays once we got to the train station and the huge doors were locked behind us, leaving hundreds of people unable to access the train. Pushing our way in, we were able to secure two spots in the walkway with hopes that eventually someone would get off and we would have a seat. That didn't happen and we traveled for 7 hours in the hallway between the first class cabin and the windows that allowed us to see a beautiful scenery, while having to get up every time someone would go through. We finally made it to Asilah. The train was still so crowded and things were piled up everywhere and I had to push my way out, while Steve had to jump off the train once it was moving with the backpack on his back.

Gaby