Our guide gave us an early morning briefing.
A special look out to view the FES Medina. FES has one and half million residents. 200,00 live in the Medina, the oldest and largest in the world built in 9th century. To give an indication of its size there are 900 mosques in this precinct!
First stop the royal palace in Fes. The oldest city in Morocco. New gates built in 1963.
Georgia and Emerald show off the gates.
Nearby is the Jewish quarter. The Jews arrived from Spain after they were expelled with the onset of the Inquisition in the 15th century. Only a few hundred remain, emigrating to Israel and other centres in the 1940s and 50s.
Storks abound.
A visit to a local ceramic factory. We saw the whole process.
Colours used for hand painted dishes
The kiln
Constructing the mosaics
Beautiful products
Then we drove through the main gates into the Medina. The gates used to be closed overnight but now you can access the Medina at all times. It is only open for business during the day and at night it becomes purely residential.
Tiny alleyways - no bikes - only mule transport
Residential doors - very plain, which don’t give any indication to the highly decorated and stylish decors of the interiors.
Mule transport
Alleyways weave in and out - very easy to get lost - intentional to confuse intruders.
The only butcher selling camel meat.
The copper souk
The tanneries. Pigeon poop one of the main ingredients of ammonia in the first stage of preparation in the white pits. We we’re all given a sprig of mint leaves to hold, in case the odour was offensive.
Our tour guide bought some shoes at the leather outlet where we viewed the tanneries.
Leather being carried to be processed.
The oldest madrasa in the world. Imams trained for 12 years in this exquisite building.
Lunch at a restaurant in the Medina
We particularly liked the hot Moroccan salads which was part of the set menu.
The fabric souk.
Georgia is shown how to tie a turban
Lots of fascinating artefacts
Back to the Medina tonight for a dinner and show of local music in a former small palace
Mark and Emerald got into the local dancing as well.
M&M
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