Days 28 and 29: Meknes and Fes

Day 28: Meknes

The weather has been mostly sunny, but very chilly in the evenings and mornings, which is all the more noticeable in a place with very few heated buildings.  Midday warms to a pleasant low-60's though, so it's very pleasant to walk around and sightsee.

Which is great, because there is a lot to see. Meknes and Fees are fairly close together- it's only about half an hour be train between them so I decided for simplicity's sake to just stay in the same hostel for 3 nights and base my adventures out of there.  Though this does have to be the most sterile hostel I have stayed in, and not particularly comfortable or a good place to meet anyone,  it's cheap and centrally located and does the job. 

Anyway, Meknes, smaller by far than Fes, is roughly dived into two sections, as are many Moroccan cities: the Medina (or medieval city) and the Ville Neauvou, built largely be the the colonial French.  The new quarter is not particularly interesting to visitors, it being just a modern city of grimy administrative and business buildings, but the Medina is fascinating. 

In general, Meknes is a much lower-key version of Fes, with many fewer (almost no) faux guides hustling you, and a Medina you can get your head around in a day.  It was Friday the day I was there, so the main souls (markets) were deserted, but this was in a lot of ways a good thing, in that it allowed me to see a lot of the other sights much more easily.  Many of them centered around a central historical figure, Moulay Ismail, a Sultan in the early 1700's who won back and consolidated much of what is now Morocco.  He was a great builder, as well, and he and his son's architectural legacy makes up a great part of the cities of Fees and Meknes.  Even better (from an interesting history perspective) was the fact the Ismaiel was also a brutal tyrant, kicking off his reign by piling 400 heads of his enemies in the palace courtyard, and also fond of driving around town in a chariot pulled by virgins. Pretty much every sight I saw had some similar gruesome/awesome story attached to it.  For example, the main gate to the Medina, colonaded with pillars from Volubolis and magnificently imposing, apparently, when it was completed, Ismaiel asked the architect if he (Ismaiel) could have done any better.  The architect, having no safe answer to this question, tried "yes", which did not work out well for him.  Nearby is is a vast underground granery that rumor has it was also used as a prison for the thousands of "Christian slaves" Ismail had is his court.  Legend also has it that when the slaves died of exhaustion, they would simply bury the bodies in the walls they building. 

And so on.  In the afternoon, I got to talking with a guy working at the beautiful madrassa school (also from that period), and against my better judgment, let myself be led to see a series of other lesser known sights.  Though this always comes with a fee which is in informally given at the end as a "tip," it can lead to uncomfortable situations, such as a dispute about the value of the tour or getting sucked into the inevitable rug shop for the hard sell, but fate was with me and this guy was on the up and up, and it ended up being a fascinating afternoon visiting wood workshops, an olive oil factory, a tannery, home sites of prominent historical figures, and so on.  Not having the right change but also very grateful for once actually receiving the goods offered and not being pressured to buy anything, I tipped the guy $20 for the several-hour tour and felt fine about it. 

After a full day of seeing the sights and again lacking much opportunity for night life, I hung out at the hostel that night chatting and playing cards with a couple from Luxembourg.

Day 29- Fes

Another clear but cold morning today, but I got a nice early start (easy to do when you go to bed at 10 having drunk nothing but mint tea and coffee the night before).  I figured out the logistics for the next day's retreat to Spain (bus takes bikes, train doesn't), which was easy because the (surprisingly clean and modern) bus depot was near the (also pleasant) train station.  It turned out to be a snap to get to Fes, buying a ticket from a computerized machine and riding the speedy electric train. 

Having a good experience with a guide the day before and hearing grim tales of faux guide hassles from my book and from the Luxenbougians, I decided this time to just bend to fate, hire an official guide (marked with really unimpressive laminated badges) negociate the price as best I could, and go for it.

This worked, mostly.  The official guide did indeed take me to many of the sights I had hoped to see (various mosques, historical schools, the much larger and more famous tannery, etc.) But interspersed with way overpriced tourist trinket shops, and ending with a stop in an overpriced restaurant.  On the up side, it did save a lot of time in the vast maze that is Fez's Medina, and the shops were short stood and soft-sell, and I threatened to walk out of the restaurant which triggered a negociation for a more reasonable price, and to be fair, it was an awesome lunch.  So all in all, a win. 

The afternoon I wandered other parts of the Medina, getting pleasantly lost and enjoying the assault on the senses that are the souks, half-heartedly souvenir shopping (everything I buy I have to carry on a bike for 2 weeks). Saw some other amazing architectural sights (schools, mosques, etc), and then down through the other, relatively newer section of the Medina, and then wandered down eventually back to the train.  Wanting to experiment with some other elements of Moroccan public transportation that having a bike had obviated, I actually sprung for a very affordable petit taxi to save myself 45 minutes of walking through the bad part of town.  The train was just as easy on the way back.  I walked the long way through the more ville neuvou section of Meknes (pretty hopping at night) which was very like a modern city anywhere (except replace all bars with cafes). Stopped at one, wrote for a while, and then back to the hostel for another early night in.  A nice day, all in all, and considering the logistics, pretty low key.