the worse the smell, the closer you are

The Rcif square and gate to the medina

I'm still not overly sure on the dining options in Fez. At night, the medina is quite intimidating - the narrow walls of the streets magnify the mystery and horror - and the shrill screaming of random crazy people certainly add some kind of element that can't necessarily be described as comforting. This, of course, makes the offers of the various restaurants and hotels for a night custodian quite comforting, since if you're out too late, you can always just have the cafe or restaurant you're in give a call to your hotel. Though our Riad had this service, and we used him New Years night, he didn't really seem eager for tips, so one didn't have to worry about that - he just dropped us off and quickly disappeared. We did make sure to tip him at the end of our trip, as the same guy was all sorts of helpful in arranging things during our stay. 

The Ruined Garden

We did find one cafe that had great food and an excellent outdoor garden for eating, kind of an oasis in the alleys. It was called the Ruined Garden. The service was exceptionally slow, but then we were there on New Years Day, so that could have had an effect, as the staff must have been up all night cleaning up. The food and juices were excellent though - and by the way, drink juice in Morocco. Always fresh and always cheap. The atmosphere in the Ruined Garden can't be beat, with greenery sprouting out of every crook and cranny in what appears to be ancient ruins behind high stone walls.

I mentioned before that recently in Morocco, there had been a movement to discourage young women from the lascivious activity of shisha smoking, so shisha bars had become absurdly and un-stereotypically harder to find, even in such a large city as Fez. Queries to the hotel staff were left in ignorance and simply an offer to use the house water pipe. The waitress at the Ruined Garden had tipped us off to one place, the Fez Lounge, which was "Right down the Talaa Kebira." Well, despite going right down the Talaa Kebira, or possibly it was the Talaa Segira or the Zkak Roua - really, they all look like the same windy narrow alleys with occasional hints of sacred glamor from tiled towers and minarets - we couldn't find the Fez Lounge. My next object was to find a hookah water pipe souvenir, but besides some crappy ones clearly imported from Egypt, there didn't seem to be much of those on sale.

A main street in Fez

If you're going to Fez though for bars, indeed, if you're going to Morocco for bars, you'll be sadly disappointed - and you'll have had quite eccentric expectations for a Muslim country. Indeed, the real activities you'd go for in Fez have more to do with wandering around the medieval medina, making your way through the bustling crowds of students and merchants, tanners and lamp makers. The medina seems impossibly busy - mainly because the amazingly narrow streets are the only thoroughfares - but eventually one can cope with it, understanding that there are basically two main avenues, and everything else sprouts out from those two main avenues. Once people start becoming sparse, it probably means you're heading into somewhere you probably shouldn't, and the feeling that the sudden stark emptiness brings to you is of a dark foreboding that possibly you should follow, especially as some hijabbed lady comes out at you and tells you to go back now and that the main street is that way, not this way, especially not this way, don't ever go this way.

Those two main avenues are filled with trinket and souvenir sellers, who aren't overly pushy. Occasionally children tried to lead our way, and we let one guide us back to Rcif, mainly because he was a cute little guy and made fun of my beard. They're not being cute or helpful for free, but for small tips, so understand that. There is little kindness for outsiders there that doesn't involve tips.

Drying and dying some leather

The main touristic draw - also being, strangely, the main thing that the local goverment isn't aware of being a touristic draw - are the tanneries. That's why people go to Fez. The government keeps talking about moving the tanneries outside of the medina, somewhere far from town, since the smell is a bit overwhelming - to cure leather, one needs to dip the skin in piss and poop, both things not of what most would describe as having pleasant smells. Despite this though, it would be an absurd mistake to move the ancient tanneries, since that's the main thing to see. Tourists certainly aren't coming to see the oldest Islamic university in the world, indeed, possibly the oldest university period in the world - because non-Muslims aren't let in there, and even when you're just on the outside of it, you'd never know you were since the walls and avenues, to the untrained eye of the visitor, all look the same. Or at least they vary enough to make everything seem an undefined blur.

A cat helping dry some leather

The tanneries though are well marked on Google maps, and if you don't have a smart phone, you can just let your nose be the guide. The worse the smell, the closer you are. As you start wandering down random side alleys, trying to find the famous view, guys will jump out and "sell" you a tour. I'm not sure if you really need to pay them, but since it's a fairly no hassle five euros, and the guy will take you to the best views of the stink pits quite quickly and will throw in a mint sprig or a cubed thing of smell good, it might be worth it. The trip though is characteristically topped off with a visit to a rug shop, where they try to sell you high quality rugs for fairly low prices. Not low enough for us, but if we were in the market for rugs, perhaps we would have bought some there.

A loom in a rug shop

The rug vendors were characters though. "We have these massed produced boring ones, they are cheaper and quickly made. Made by men, traditionally. And the much nicer, more beautiful, and more expensive ones are made by women. The women have more time to make the rugs, and are working all day long on them, and one rug will generally take a woman two or three weeks to make." We looked at some, and asked the price for a couple, but at 300 euro, they were still over our heads.

"Name your price then," the vendor said.

"We've got a hundred to spare, and I like that one."

"No, you must be reasonable. Name a reasonable price. That one is 300."

"But that's the price I'll pay, because that's what I have. 100 euro."

"That's not a reasonable price, name a reasonable one." He apparently had never seen the walk away tactic actually being used, since that was what we did. It worked for me lots in buying weird textiles I didn't really need in Turkey, but here I was saved my 100 euro by his steadfastness.

"Really man, that's all I can do, have a nice day!" And we walked away.