Day 5 Fez Medina

Awoke at 8AM after sleeping deeply in a four poster bed in our apartment up on the third floor of the Riad Damia. The sun was shining and the air was fresh. We had an elegant breakfast en famille down in the lobby with a private corner for us.Coffee with warm milk, yogurt, mouflettas, bread and jam, hot chocolate all on nnice china. Adnin was very helpful. After packing our audio visual gear and rain coats, we met our guide, Rachid, in the lobby. He is a middle-aged Fassi, like me, with a calm, casual manner. We set off walking the crooked and narrow streets of the medina of Fez, one of the largest iin the world, as everyone reminds us. Thousands of people live and work here especially creating the crafts Morocco is known for, leather, pottery, jewelry, fabric, carpets, argan oil products. What was most fascinating is how life is conducted within these alleys, with transport by hand cart, donkey and mule, motorcycle and thousands of feet. There are thousands of alley ways, mostly unmarked for the unintiated to find. Behind the walls are beautiful homes, mosques, stores, and thousands of little shops and merchants. You can find restaurants, hair salons, pharmacies, banks and ATMs as well as every kind of shop. Some are a whole in the wall and as Rachid showed us, some are a hole in the ground. He took us to see the men stoking the fires for a hammam, the weavers creating scarves and bedspreads in a rainbow of colours, the leather merchants and the colourful tanneries where people paraded knee deep in leather dye vats (smells terrible) and worked to restore crafts and sites that date back hundreds of years. Rachid led us up and down to see mosques from the outside, the Karoyine University, several restored medersas and several shops. We were always treated with a smooth and professional sales pitch. At a carpet cooperative, we explored the three stiry building and were taken up to the roof tosee a view of Fez 360 degreees. In the buildings, we saw beautiful tile work, fountains, carved plaster and wood friezes and walls, always around a central courtyard. We were entertained by a carpet salesman who knew how to work through Kate and Guittel. We almost bought some of the beautiful Fez carpets, ready for shipment by "Fed Ex or DHL" right to your door. The sales pitch was accompanied by mint tea made fresh on the spot. We visited a Women's cooperative store where they showed us how the argan tree was used for its fruit and oil for cosmetics. Unfortunately it was Friday and a lot of souks were closing up so we did not see as much jewelry or food shops as we would have liked. However, the hours passed quickly and all were enjoying the sights, sounds and smells. We ate lunch in a restaurant near the upper areas of the medina with our guide. Delicious soups, pastilla, and shrimps pil-pil with tea at the end. Then Rachid took us to see the inside of a wealthy, Fassi home. A maid let us in to see the house of an absentee wealthy man with a huge interior courtyard, fabulous furniture and antiques. She served us more mint tea and cake and then showed us the multiple huge upstairs bedrooms, each with its own bath. All faced out on the central courtyard. The kids wanted to buy the place on the spot, forgetting where it is located in the heart of old Fez. However, for all of us it was an eye opener to show us that behind walls all can be hidden and sometimes imagination is needed to understand how things work and appear.
Around 4PM, we arrived back at the Riad for a 'pit stop' and we all climbed into putt-putt, rescued from the garage man, to head down to a pottery factory where evrythjing is created from the clay of the local soil. Many hands are needed to spin the clay, mold it, cook it, paint it, and then cut and shape it into tiles, mosaics, fountains, dishes and other objects.Although the sales pitch and explanations were smooth, the prices were high  and we succumbed to only buying our house address numbers in porcelain. Again we were assured that the Fez craftsmen were the best and shipping around the world to our door was no problem. Considering the internet and the way you can withdraw money from an ATM in the medina which dates back 8 centuries as if you were at the home branch in Montreal, I have to believe that shipping is no problem and ordering by Internet also is easy.
I was also impressed by the easy way people switch languages from Arabic, to French, to English, with Italian, Spanish and German thrown in for good measure.

At the end of the day  we gathered back in our Riad apartment and watched the hundreds of digital phot memories we have accumulated in just four days. Our batteries recharged (literally), we  had a delicious Moroccan meal prepared by our host and his wife, washed down by a bottle of Moroccan rosé from Meknes. Jazz was playing and we all were relaxed enjoying Moroccan salads, chicken with olives and lemon and fresh oranges. The rain started up again and so we were all happy to be sheltered behind the strong door and walls of our Riad Damia. Tomorrow Fez, nouvelle ville and Volubilis we hope.