Fès Train Station - Heather, Jess, Me
We took a flight from Lyon --> Marrakech on the Royal Air Maroc airlines. It was about a 3 hour flight, and we got in at 11pm and went straight to our hotel. We fitfully slept through the night, awoken by what sounded like an oil drum being dragged across the street, screaming people, horn honking, etc. The next morning we got up in time for breakfast and our first Moroccan tea (Thé à la Menthe). Our plan was to immediately go to Fès and then do the touristy Marrakech visit on the return side of the trip. We first tried our luck at the bus station, but were hustled onto a bus by a scammer who said it would by 6-7 hours... only to find out from the driver that the trip would be at least 10. So, we hurried back to the train station JUST in time to catch the train to Fès. The train was about 7.5 hours long and really hot and smelly. We were all in MUCH need for a shifty (look/walk around) after that ride and were not in the mood to deal with any more scam artists in the busy streets of Fès. The thing about Maroc is that if you are a tourist, you WILL be swarmed by men who offer you cheap tours, cheap hotels, cheap taxis, etc. Their "help" really will just bring you to some crappy place owned by them or by their friends, so it is fairly important to do research ahead of time and know where you want to stay and where you want to go. We had already reserved a night at the Riad Ksar de Fès that was about 20 mins outside the city. At first we were a little skeptical as to what it would be like and not so happy about it being so far outside the main tourist area, but this ended up being a blessing in disguise. A riad is a house that has a courtyard/garden in the center of it, quite like the Mexican hacienda. Many of the riads in Maroc are owned by western Europeans who came into Maroc and bought them at cheap prices, fixed them up, and make money from them to other, usually western, tourists. (Like us). This one was owned by a French-Moroccan man named Pascal, and the house manager was a young Moroccan guy named Simo. The Riad Ksar de Fès was in the middle of a peaceful countryside, and we were greeted with a plate of cookies and Moroccan tea, a much-welcome tea-time after the 8 hours of dirty train travel.
We stayed in the riad that night since they had a restaurant that served wonderful homemade Moroccan food (Tangine, Cous-Cous). We had a couple bottle es of wine with dinner and with the owner of the Riad, and then retired to our comfy room for a night of sleep that did NOT involve terrible noises.
The next day, we hired a guide to take us around the Medina in downtown Fès. A medina is the old walled part of the city that is full of tiny, labyrinthine streets, lined with shops that sell everything from shoes to raw meat, silk, spices, pottery, and tourist trinkets. A guide is needed for the medina in Fès because it is so huge (largest in Maroc) and because the streets are like a maze without any real directional help. The guide was a local named Rashid. He started out being great, telling us the history behind everything. But towards the end he seemed really to be in a rush, and fairly angry that we weren't buying anything. One of the things that guides expect is for tourists to buy a lot of the stuff they see along the way, and the guides get a percentage of the purchase. We weren't the typical tourists, though, and bought maybe a total of 150 dirhams of goods ($15). Oh well!
After the tour with the guide was finished, we had an entire half of a day left to do as we pleased. We decided to have our driver take us to the old Roman city of Volubilis. I love Roman ruins. Maybe it's because I suffered through Latin lessons as a kid (Ecce Romani) and had a secret love for the stories about Roman baths and theatres and servants. This place was amazing. In fact, I'm going to dedicate an entire new post about it, after this one is done.
After Volubilis, we had our driver take us home over the rolling grassy hills. The countryside between Fès and Meknes (near Volubilis) is stunning. If someone had plopped me down and didn't tell me where I was, I would have guessed Ireland. The greens were so lush and the soil so rich-- not what I would have guessed Morocco to be like. There are a lot of olives grown in those parts, and a lot of wine as well! In fact, we drank locally produced wine the entire time we were there. We happened upon countryside that was really like a mirage: green hills contrasted with bare-white mountains that looked over long blue lakes and rows of vignes.
We had one more dinner at the Riad Ksar de Fès, hung out with Simo, our somewhat sexy hotel manager, and slept soundly awaiting another full day of train that awaited us.
No comments:
Post a Comment