Fès

In Fès, humans do things that you thought only machines did nowadays. Knives are sharpened on a stone of mystical provenance turned by foot power. Men clamber about in open vats full of cow, goat and other hides at various stages of tanning - very stinky. With some of the brightest natural (hmmm) colors the world has ever seen, it's quite an assault on the senses and has a medieaval feel. This was the same through the rest of the medina with the ting ting ting of metal workers and the shouts warning unsuspecting pedestrian that there was a delivery donkey coming up behind them. Weavers doing embroidery and double-knotting carpets in the most intricate designs, without a pattern in sight. (And if anyone’s interested in buying a very nice carpet, we’ve shipped several back to Australia…good price very cheap!!!)

Undoubtedly, some of what is being produced in Fès medina is for tourists, but mostly it’s local. How many tourists are interested in sharpening knives, hiring a grotesque ‘wedding chair’ or a tagine to cook for 100 people, or dying their hijab black?

The al fresco trade and commerce represents the ‘public’ side of Fès (and Morocco) and contrasts with the hidden provate side. Careful not to even give a glimpse of homes and the family, private lives are carried on behind high walls with no windows to the outside world, often entered through a hobbit door. The hidden ‘inside’ was well illustrated by our riad. (Riads are large houses that were formerly owned by wealthy locals but are now mostly owned by foreigners who have restored them, receiving a mixed, but predominantly positive, reception from locals.) From the street, it was a small, dark door in an immense wall. Inside, the courtyard was paved with marble and filled with plants, the walls were covered with zellij (traditional tiling) and carved plaster, and the ceilings – 6m or so high – were of intricately carved and painted cedar wood. Spectacular!

From Fès it was on to Morocco's biggest city - Casablanca.