Fez (also spelled Fes) is the medieval capital of Morocco, and was a great city of high Islamic civilization. Fez has the best-preserved old city (Medina) in the Arab world, with a sprawling, labyrinthine medina (Fes el-Bali) which is the largest car-free urban zone in the world. However, it was full of donkeys.
We arrived in Fes after dark and found ourselves driving down a crowded, narrow street filled with carts cooking kebabs with the wonderful smell, but knowing we could not eat it. It turns out our Riad Reda (Riad is really a house with a garden, but many have been turned into guest houses) was in the middle of the Souk (which is how they spell it and pronounce it in Morocco, not shuk). It was a Friday night and the Souk was crowded with wall-to-wall people. Abriham could not find a place to park the car and had to park blocks away. The hotel said they would send a man with a cart for the luggage, but we started walking with our bags through the crowd. We did finally catch up with the cart, and they took our bags and we followed them through the souk. It was filled mostly with men everywhere crowding around us. I must admit it was a bit scary.
For more of my blog on Fez, please click on this link:
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