We’re still at the campsite near Fez.<\/p>\n
Weather: sunny most of the day<\/p>\n
Hope you all got your copies of the Nottingham Evening Post today – we’re famous at last!! If you aren’t in the Nottingham area, we’ll hopefully have a version on our blog early next week.<\/p>\n
What a day we’ve had today. The French guy who we met in McDonalds car park yesterday at Meknes is also parked up here in Fez. He negotiated a deal for a tour for the city with a guide and transport, so that’s where we’ve been – from 10am – 6.30pm! Poor Charlie had to stay in Dave, so J got up early and took him out for an extra long walk this morning before we set off. Good job he did as I don’t think he’d have enjoyed himself (and right now he’s really enjoying J hand feeding him his dinner because of the guilt from leaving him so long!).<\/p>\n
We piled into a mini-bus with McDonalds man (I’ll have to call him that as we never found out his name) and his wife and their two small kids, and another french couple. Luckily our guide spoke many languages – as they do – but the majority of the day it was french, which suited me fine as I was happy to wander around and take piccies – about 500! They’re going to take some sorting, but I’m pretty sure there will be some new header images soon and pics on the photos page as soon as we have a decent enough connection.<\/p>\n
Our first stop was the royal palace. It seems the king has quite a few of these dotted around the country from time gone by and if they are anything like this\u00a0one, they’ll be quite impressive. As we stood taking photos of the main entrance another tourist nearby was asked by the guards not to photograph the\u00a0wooden side entrance, our guide said it was because it didn’t look impressive enough!<\/p>\n
We were then taken to a fort on a nearby hill to see a great panorama of the city. We were told there are over 160 mosques in the Medina (old town) and you could clearly see the green roofs speckled among the beige buildings and millions of satelite dishs. If about a million people live here, then it looks\u00a0like each one has their own dish.<\/p>\n
Our guide told us that in each area of the city there are five things you always find – 1. A fountain – for drinking water (although many of these have been\u00a0dismantled as people have water in their homes now) 2. A Hamman (hot water\/washing area – that also does massages, men in the morning, women in the afternoon) 3. A souk (covered shopping area) 4. A Mosque 5. A Fonduk (stables and accommodation).<\/p>\n
We walked about for several hours in the souks (covering about 5km) visiting tiny workshops where people were making the items on sale – metal work, wood work, weaving, spinning yarn, leather goods and even the tanneries where they make the leather (unfortunately this was done with lime and pigeon poo to soften it, then donkey and horse wee – image the smell, we were all given some mint to sniff as we approached).<\/p>\n
Leather tanneries:
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