A Wonderful Tour of Morocco

The second stop is the city of Fes, where we stay at the Hotel Menzeh, fairly central. Fes is known as the cultural capital of Morocco, also called the "Florence of the Maghreb" for the wealth of its monuments and its historic and artistic heritage. The most astonishing spectacle (and we can really call it that) of Fes is its medina, the largest in Morocco, so beautiful and intriguing that it has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You only have to venture through one of the gates into the medina to be in another world where time has stopped in the maze of narrow streets. We strolled through the medina in the evening, and in the silence you could see only the masons forced to work at night; all the closed shops held great surprises in store for the next day.

In the morning we fully understood why the masonry work is done at night: a whirlwind of sounds, colours and smells, pleasant scents and nauseating odours, the encounter in the narrow lanes with donkeys carrying protruding loads that almost put us in danger, peeking inside a thousand shops that only increased our curiosity. At lunchtime it was astonishing to open a door in an alley steeped in the city's chaos and discover an almost magical restaurant, with mosaics, paintings, gilded chandeliers....and outside, the chaotic life! We visited the Bou Inania medersa, the Karaouine mosque (from the outside...we are not Muslims) and, again from the outside, the sumptuous Royal Palace (every city has one, and this new sovereign of Morocco is not doing badly either); then on to the souk with the tanneries and leather dye works.

A sprig of mint vaguely soothed the acrid smell of the dyes while men were immersed in the vats to dye the hides. We also saw the hard work of those who by hand cut the small tiles for the many mosaics that adorn Moroccan houses and buildings from a coloured tile. Of that "total chaos", in that teeming life, we will certainly keep a fine memory.....