Unusual start to the day due to the fact we were not awakened by a man yelling at us. Practicing Muslims are required to pray five times a day and the first of these sessions occurs at dawn. In December this happens to be at 5:30 in the morning. To aide in the remembrance of this daily task the mosques broadcast what I assume are daily prayers out of their megaphones over the entire city. These announcements vary in length but happen to be longer in the morning and run anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes each. Because of the poor quality of these sound systems the chant resembles long drawn out buzz sounds that Tim thinks sounds like a NASCAR race. Usually our place of sleep is right in the blast path of this audio announcement but in Fes it is muffled enough for us to sleep though it.
Breakfast was included with this stay so we ventured down to eat before we headed off for the day. In most of the other breakfast situations we have had, a few pastries were provided and they included an egg if we were lucky. This was not the case here. After around 10 plates had been presented to us Tim thought the setting was complete and attempted to take a picture. The owner quickly stopped him and told him to wait until the rest of the food had arrived. We had the carb load of the century.
One of the pastries was this weird egg based cake like thing that resembled a mix of honey comb and shag carpet. It was the strangest texture, I have never eaten anything like it before
After breakfast we plotted out some landmarks to visit for the day and were instructed by the hostel owner on how to get to each one. We turned down his offer to arrange a tour guide thinking we could figure it out on our own. We soon regretted this decision. The trek started off well with our first landmark called the the Medersa el Attarin. It dates back to 1325 and was created by the Fez Islamic schools.
On the way to our next top we passed another huge mosque. This was was different than the others we had seen in that they had a large open square in the front and they happily let gringos take photos of the inside.
Next was the quarter of town that specialized in brass work. The sound in this area is much like your neighbor's teenage kid on his new drum set. Things had been going too well so of course this didn't last. Our next stop was the tannery where all of the leather is dried and died. We didn't have any clear directions other than it was close to the brass workers. We walked down a small alley and a young girl pointed and said tannery.
The riad owner had instructed us to remain silent an ignore any children who approached us because they would most likely be hired by shop keepers to round up tourists and take them to their shops. We passed her and refused her services. Looking at Tim she said 'you are this' and grabbed a mans ass. She had spunk. We wandered around aimlessly for about an hour trying every little side street we could find, often walking in circles and passing landmarks we had seen multiple times.
Upon approaching the brass band section for the 5th time I gave in and decided to end this charade. The same little girl who had spotted us before came to us once again and I confirmed we would follow her. She lead us down an alley we had crossed a few times and just past it there was a spray painted sign on the wall that said le tannery with an arrow. I am not sure how we missed this but we suck. She pointed to it and said tannery and then went the opposite way. Realizing she was taking us to a shop and not the public viewing area I thought about protesting but quickly stopped caring and just wanted to get this landmark out of the way. She lead us out of the medina and into a small shop that resided in the outside wall.
The shop keeper met us at the door and lead us up to his balcony that overlooked the tannery. We were instantly kind of dissapointed. What we had worked so hard to find was a bit of a letdown. It was not as vibrant as the photos we had previously seen.
After snapping a few photos we attempted to leave while minimizing the amount of hassle we were about to face. Most of these schemes start by having a young child take you to the site for 'free'. They proceed to take you to a shop where you can see the site but then are expected to spend a lot of money. We casually browsed the 3 floor inventory and proceeded to leave. Tim walked out the door quickly but I was stopped by 3 rather large gentlemen. I inquired about the claims of the child and they said it was only free to get to the store and that if i didn't but anything I had to pay. I am pretty sure this is illegal but what was I going to do about it.
I handed the man my smallest bill and forced my way out of the door before he had the chance to realize how little I had actually gave him. Outside Tim was already being hassled by the girl who had lead us to the shop. When she saw he wouldn't budge she approached me demanding money. I pulled the same trick on her and handed her 2 dh and then lost her behind a sea of parked cars. Tim was not so lucky. I heard some coins hit the ground and then he emerged shortly later. He ended up forgoing 5 dh. We walked briskly back to the medina and made it through unscathed.
We decided to go back and follow the sign we had seen before pointing to the tanneries to see if we would have any better luck there. The road to the entrance is a massive alley full of the nastiest hard sellers we had encountered yet. They all made wild claims and were pulling and pushing us into their shops to be escorted up to their rooftop. We turned down one alley which had an official government sign pointing to the tannery and a number of men yelled to us that we could not got down that way because it is only for artisans. We later found this claim to be false but not wanting to be insulting the hard working locals we turned around and fought our way back through the gauntlet. I am not sure how you are supposed to see this site without a guide. It is fairly difficult as a terrace is needed to see inside and all of the shops own the terrace. We decided to call it a day and go back to our room.
Upon arriving we discovered our TV is much like the ones we had encountered in South Africa. Just like in the south, the TV had on screen video games built in. We spent the rest of the evening attempting to conquer it. Half of the time was spent simply trying to determine what the basic premise and rules of the game were.
We also found that our Riad has 864 channels of which around 100 of which are 24 hour adds for phone sex lines.
Tim couldn't get enough
We are pretty tired of medina life and are ready to see the other sights outside of the medina Fes has to offer.
