Day 10 of Moroccan Vacation: Fes on February 14th, 2017

This was our last day in our short visit to the city of Morocco. The plan of the day was to visit Fes Medina before heading for Airport out of town on a flight to Barcelona.

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In Fes we stayed at Riad Fes Aicha, which was the only hotel I named in my journals. It ended up being a spectacular stay at a spacious room (by Moroccan Riad standards) by the courtyard, with a funny chatty male manager. (Well, but when he’s absent, there was quite some communication difficulties with the French Speaking maid.)

And this was the best riad breakfast we had in Morocco, off to a great start on this last day in the country.

After last night’s experience in Fes Medina, we sort of understood its major streets, although GPS was still a necessity here.

Chouara Tannery

Our first stop of the day was Chouara Tannery, which featured honeycomb of dye, leather skins and stinky smells all over the place. A shop manager nearby gladly showed us the process (with a fee), while I carefully hid my noses under branches of mint that he offered me.
How could the local workers working right underneath the sun mutated into immunity against the smells?
It’s amazing that these smells seemed to be confined to the Chouara Tannery, I didn’t feel them at all walking in other parts of the Medina.

After that, we wandered by Al Quaraouiyine University, the oldest existing, continually operating university in the world. But, like other Islamic institutions in the country, it wasn’t open to visitors, so we just took a peek at its doorstep.

Bou Inania Madrasa

After that we found ourselves at Bou Inania Madrasa, a religious school founded in AD 1351–56 by Abu Inan Faris and widely acknowledged as an excellent example of Marinid architecture. There were some bodywork repair in the 18-20 centuries though, so while walking in its courtyard, we found most of the tiles and carvings pretty much intact.

It was 1230pm and time for lunch. Luckily, we were walking pass some food stands, so my friend and I happily ordered some sandwiches. The unfortunate thing was that, there was some language barrier between us and the gentleman selling sandwiches, so we reluctantly accepted his offer of “mixed meat sandwich”, which turned out to be filled with guts and bellies from animals I couldn’t name. But at the end of the day, I didn’t throw up on myself.

There was also some fruit stands nearby, so we for the last time stocked our bags with cheap Moroccan fruits, strawberries in particular. There goes our after-lunch desert and our airport-takeaway dinner.

After our sandwich and fruit shopping, my friend and I decided to skip the other Medersa (religious schools) in Fes Medina and headed back to the riad, where we sit in the courtyard for the remainder of the day, until our driver came for pick us up for the airport.

END

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