The funky cold Medina

We took three different taxis to the medina. Marisa and I luckily got paired with Mustafa and he shared the history of Fez on our ten minute ride. When we arrived to one the medina’s gates, Mustafa gave us some background on the largest urban zone without cars. We saw some African’s singing and dancing in the street, and Mustafa told us they started dancing when they got freed from slavery, and havent stopped since. Mustafa was straight faced.

Taxi ride to the medina


At the gates


Mustafa then took us through the narrow streets of the medina. We saw all kinds of products being sold. From spices to sheeps heads. The most amazing thing about the medina is that its actually still functioning as it did in the 9th century. I feel like some other places I’ve been to are functioning solely for tourists, but this definitely wasn’t the case. I saw people tanning leather, making fabric, shucking vegetables, and making pottery the same way they had been doing for centuries. Mustafa took us to some great shops that we would of never found on our own. While in the leather shop, I was very tempted to buy a camel leather briefcase for 400 djarum, but decided against it.

Leather pools



We visited the oldest university in the world, from before Christ. We ate a great lunch of shwarma (sp?) a very spiced meat and cous cous. It was amazing. We sat on this huge pillows and enjoyed our meal in peace away from the noisy medina. After lunch, we wandered about the medina for awhile. I was invited into a leather shop by a man with one arm. He told me he was selling his shop to study plants. He wanted to make a potion to make a mans penis bigger. He continued to tell me two very dirty jokes and I thanked him for his time and left. For an after lunch snack, I got a garbanzo bean sandwich for 50 cents from a little boy. It was tasty. We went to a fabric shop and got dressed up in some authentic outfits and after, we visited the local “doctor” He had hundreds of vials and jars filled with potions, spices, dyes and who knows what else. He sat us down and had us sniff some stuff to clear our heads. He then introduced his different potions and spices. I bought a bunch of saffron for my mom. It was very cheap compared to America. I got 5 grams of the spice for around 20 euro.

Sheep heads for sale


We took a big Scooby doo style taxi to a local supermarket that sold beer in the very back. We picked up some local beer made in Casablanca. When we got back to the hotel, our waiter from the night before delivered hash to our room. We spent the night on our balcony drinking beer and smoking Moroccan hash. We got dinner down the street and after, me and the two other guys wanted to check out the nightlife. We went to the hotel next door to its bar. We walked in to the dark, smoke-filled room completely underdressed. There was an older crowd of Moroccan men dressed very nicely and enjoying listening to a Moroccan woman sing Arabic songs, going from table to table while a keyboardist accompanied her. There were a couple prostitutes at the bar which were not bad looking. We sat on a huge leather couch and ordered a beer. The prostitutes were eyeing us and the whole time we were just hoping that the woman singer would not come over to our table. We finished our beer, decided we didn’t really fit into the scene there and walked home. We all slept well last night, with a trip to the atlas mountains on our agenda for the next day.