First impressions are a funny thing. I was really looking forward to Fez. I was prepared to have it be the highlight of our Moroccan trip. But, I was underwhelmed.
The Medina of Fez is the largest non-motorized urban area in the world. There are over 9000 roads/alleys in the Medina. Unlike Marrakesh it does not allow any motorized vehicles inside it.
The Medina of Fez is a UNESCO world heritage site, and it is an impressive place. There are an astonishing number of alleys and narrow roads to follow. But for some reason I liked the energy of Marrakesh better.
We were told that we needed a guide to cope with the souks in the Medina, and that it was too overwhelming to tackle on our own. We told him we had been in the country for a couple of weeks and had already visited some souks and bought souvenirs for home. But despite our telling the guide we were interested in history and the story of the city, we kept getting guided into shops for things we had already bought or were not interested in.
In each shop we were put under a mild to moderate degree of pressure to buy something. We had the option to walk out, but it took effort to get out without purchasing something.
We did visit two interesting museums, one was a former Madras for the university in the medina. It was a beautiful and interesting building, the other was a former souk for the camel caravans that came into town, a place that the merchants from the caravans would stay and sell their goods.
In these buildings he gave us a cursory explanation of the building and its history and then told us he would meet us in the lobby after 20 minutes. This is where we wanted him to spend his time with us.
Fez has the oldest continuous operating university in the world in the Medina dating to the 1100’s, and interestingly in this male dominated culture it was founded by a woman. As non-moslems we are not permitted to enter it as it is also considered to be a mosque, but we were able to peak in at a couple of points.
We were also taken to see the tannery which was much more impressive than the one in Marrakesh. But on the whole I preferred the souk in Marrakesh as wild and crazy as it was to the one in Fez.
Ton and I are both fighting some kind of virus, so that may have also contributed to my bad day in Fez. We are going to spend a couple of more days here after taking tomorrow off for a day of rest, so hopefully Fez will redeem itself.
I am going to have Ton read this later, and I will ask her to comment on it tomorrow. But my feeling is that while we probably would have got lost-and may even had to pay someone to get us to our pickup point at the end of the day. I think we would have enjoyed our visit to Fez today more on our own with google maps than with our guide as we would have been focused on the things we wanted to see.
