Fez.....a holy city?

34:05.16 N 005:10.52 W 

 A suggestion. If having the heads of two small men nuzzling your armpits while a woman with chickens sits on your feet, is  irksome may i suggest that you don’t take the 11.20 from Rabat to Fez. Gabriel was too shocked to find our predicament wretched, he still does not have a sense of time and the three hours still to go had not registered. Hannah seemed to be involved with some obscure type of African pilates. Dawn was in any other situation being extremely intimate with a Berber.

The journey was frightful and in all honestly things did improve after an hour when 12,000 people left our carriage at the next stop. However we were excited we were going to Fez, ...a holy city.  Anyhow we alighted, and Dawn Google map in hand got us to where the Riad (hotel) was meant to be. This wasn’t actually where the hotel was. Completely lost we sucuumbed to asking a local for help. This in Morocco is like going up too a stranger in Mcr or La and saying please take me on a long circuituitous route for a lot of money..oh yes and please don’t smile. Ottoman our tour guide took us on a laborious 45 minute walk which we later found out would of taken 5 minutes if we had walked in a straight line.  Eventually we reached our Riad which was absolutely beautiful It was an old Moroccan palace surrounding a courtyard was full of the most beautiful mosaics, plaster relief hard to describe it was amazing. Our room was massive and a Jacuzzi bath. The owners were lovely and if you do go to Fez stay at Riad Youssef. Probably my favourite hotel in the world.

Next day with guide we ventured into Fez. Which loosely translates as being schlepped round his mates’ shops. Unlike Rabat where people are not tourist orientated and we have never been hassled or bothered we were treated like prey. I did buy a beautiful leather jacket which Dawn also says is cool, however i probably paid 16 times more than a local, however it is too cool for school. By three having seen nothing of real interest we retreated back to the Riad.

I could describe the next day, we visited the Jewish quarter which seems devoid of Jews or anything Jewish however it was pretty much the same. Dawn took us on a walk to a castle which was cool with great views.

Anyhow i did not really like fez. It is huge, the market is the size of Altrincham however it was hard work and we are in future going to stick to smaller towns.

Fez is a holy city in the same way Manchester is a tropical city and Los Angeles is a small hamlet inhabited by giraffes.

Dawn

Just a note to temper adams  views of Fes – It isn’t as bad as he makes out and the souk is amazingly complex and diverse, how so many people live, shop and work so closely together is unbelievable. As far as my shopping/visiting experiences of Arabic markets go, we got off quite lightly, everyone was very polite and friendly and there was not too much hassle – most other places are much more aggressive and predatory.

Photo update – Sines to Lagos

Only one photo of sines as I has no space left on my camera card (cant down load or delete pictures at moment) you haven’t missed much to be honest. The view from the boat as we sailed south was similar to the rest of the coast, long stretches of beach and some cliffs with lighthouses on. We rounded Cap San Vincente in the dark and arrived in Lagos as dawn broke. Views of the nudist beach are unfortunately devoid of bare flesh. Lagos is very pretty and very touristy even in winter. Probably the nicest place on the Algarve though. The wind sculptures on the castle roof were particularly beautiful. Had only a few photos left until mum and dad arrived with my new phone/camera. More photos of their visit to follow.....