Pigeon poo and Cow wee

Finally, we arrived in Fez. We were very grateful to be there in one piece, but a tad stressed out for the experience.

We followed a random guide straight to our Riad – a restored 14^th Century palace – and made a plan for the rest of the day. Being the artisan capital of Morocco and renowned for the quality of it’s craftsmanship, we had planned on getting out and doing spot of shopping over the course of our stay. We were a bit stressed, however, to discover that we had basically arrived on the equivalent of Christmas Eve and Fez was going to be shutting down for a week. We therefore had a very small window of opportunity to get out and see the city before everyone went into a festive hibernation.

At the advice of our Riad, we hired a guide to show us around and take us to some of the Cooperatives so that we could do some shopping. Fez is believed to be one of the oldest functioning city in the world, which essentially means that it is huge and incredibly hard to navigate. While our more avid blog followers will recall us talking about how easy it is to get lost in Venice, or even more recently how labyrinth-like Marrakech is, Fez takes it to an almost incomprehensible new level. Without a word of exaggeration, you pretty much can’t step outside without a guide.

Aside from the guide’s uncanny ability to navigate through the rabbit warren-like streets, a real highlight was visiting the tanneries where they have been tanning leather for 900 years. The workers stand in stone honeycomb-shaped vats up to their arms in the various dyes that they use to tan the leather. It was quite an incredible sight.

The thing that struck us most  - quite literally – was the overwhelming smell. Aside from the dye, all the leather is treated with a concoction of pigeon poo and cow wee – so the smell wafting up to our viewing platform was overpoweringly horrendous.

We were given mint leaves to sniff to take the edge off, but gee whiz we felt sorry for the workers. 

We spent a couple of hours walking through the souks, soaking in the buzzing atmosphere as people prepared for Eid (more to follow on that shortly). We discovered that in Fez, rather than advertising with a sign or a nice picture describing what they have for sale, butchers will simply hang up the heads of whatever animal’s meat they happen to have to have in stock. Camels were the bargain of the day!