The Alleys of Fez

The day in Fez started off a little shaky for me. Must have been something a ate / drank. I stayed back in the morning while the others visited a mosque and walked around the Medina. I joined them after lunch.

Nothing can prepare you for the alleys of Fez. There are thousands of them in a giant maze. I wouldn’t dare walk into the Medina (old town) with out a guide. It would be impossible to find your way out. We had two guides, one walking ahead of us one behind. At one point we stopped to take a picture and couldn’t find either guide. We stayed where we were called them on our cell phone and they came to get us.

The streets or alley’s are very narrow. Most of the time you could reach out and touch both sides at the same time. The streets are lined with thousands of little stalls and behind beautiful doors are both small homes and large beautiful mansions. It is amazing, just like something out of the Arabian nights. The primary way to deliver anything in the Medina is via mule or donkey and they come down the alley and you have to move aside for them. Everyone calls them Fez Taxis.

The most amazing thing is that this is not a tourist trap. This is a real living Medina with 250,000 people living and working in it. One of the many things we saw was a bakery. There are hundreds of them in the Medina. Unlike any bakery I have ever heard of, the women bring their own dough to the bakery to bake in the ovens. They identify their bread from their neighbors by making unique marks on the top of the bread.