More of Morocco

After spending a few days wandering around Casablanca and Rabat I headed over to Fez which is an absolutely amazing city. The town of Fez is dominated by the old Medina and it is basically a city out of the past. The transportation and shipping of goods around the town is accomplished with mules and you'd be lucky to find a building that was constructed within the past 500 years. In fact, the entire pace of life seems not to have changed in centuries and it was great spending several days just wandering around, exploring and taking photos.




After spending a lot of time in the old Medina, I decided on my last day in town to explore the Fez El-Jdid or new Fez, which is called “new” since it wasn't built until the 13th century unlike the “old Fez” which has been around since 800 AD. This Fez was actually built because the Sultan at the time was a bit paranoid and he decided he was better off building his own fortified city right next to the actual city of Fez and filling it with Syrian Mercenaries

One of the more interesting aspects of Fez El-Jdid's history is that the Sultan at the time had a penchant for jews so he encouraged thousands of jews to come to his new-town which developed into a thriving community or Mellah. So, in my search for the Mellah I must have seemed a little bit lost and a random Moroccan man asked me in Arabic if I needed help (at least I assume that is what he asked me), then again in French (which I also don't know), and finally in some broken English. We started talking for a while and he invited me into his very modest home for tea. Tea, eventually became breakfast and eventually he invited me back to join him and his wife Fatima, his 12 year old son Rachid and his 17 year old daughter Afaf for lunch later that afternoon.

After that pleasant distraction I continued my quest for the Mellah and once again I guess I looked lost, foreign, or both because someone asked me if I was looking for something. Coincidentally, the person unprompted mentioned he was a part of one of the 100 remaining jewish families in Fez and if I was interested he would give me a tour of the old Jewish quarter. I accepted and then had a quick tour of an incredibly run-down section of town including seeing the old Jewish cemetary and several synagogues. The most fascinating part was the huge differences in architectural styles between the Jewish and Arab buildings. Despite the fact that both sets of buildings were built at the same time, in the same place for the same purposes the Jewish buildings universally had windows and balconies that faced the streets outside while almost all of the Arab residences were built with an inner-courtyard which all of the rooms faced into. I'm not quite sure what the anthropological impacts of this are, but it seemed really interesting nonetheless.


After the tour was finished I continued exploring the rest of Fez El-Jdid before heading back to the family I met earlier to join them for lunch. Based on my request the family prepared couscous with chicken and I got back in time to get some very rudimentary Moroccan cooking lessons as well as a crash-course in how to eat when invited to a Moroccan's house. A couple of tips for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation:

1) There are no plates, napkins, tablecloths, or concerns of hygiene
2) Everyone eats out of the common serving platter with a spoon and anything that you can't handle with a spoon should be eaten with your fingers
3) Any inedible things (bone, grissle, etc.) just place on the table in front of you
4) What do you need a napkin for when you've got bread that can sop up any grease off your fingers
5) Homemade food somehow is always better than at a restaurant



So, after a delicious meal I took off to pick up my bag at my hotel and went to catch a train to Meknes, another former capital of Morocco that doesn't have quite as much of a tourist pull as Fez, so I thought it would be fun to explore without having the dozens of street-touts bugging me that were present in Fez.

I got to Meknes around 4:00pm and checked into the Hotel Marok, which is definitely one of the bigger dumps I have stayed in during the course of my travels. In addition to having literally 10 people camped out in the room next to me, the hotel had no heat (and it was about 40 degrees outside at night), and not only no hot-water but no water at all! I guess, not all $10/night hotels are created equal...

After checking into the hotel I wandered around the Medina of Meknes exploring and enjoying the fact that I was one of the only tourists around. I eventually got dinner from a street vendor of a ground meat sandwich along with some pastries from a little bakery down the road. I finally got back to my room around 9:00pm and getting as bundled up as I could in my freezing room I started sorting through all the photos I had taken thus far until around 1:00am.