We were glad to arrive at Fez after six hot and dusty hours on the bus from Tétouan. The bus was better than a school bus – barely – with no air-con and the one-position seats. But the splendor of the Riad des Remparts de Fez made up for the inconvenience. Even the simple elegance of Hotel El Reducto paled in comparison. The hotel, built in 1347 is only a few meters up an alley into the medina, an important consideration if you’re doing the “bag drag” and just a 15-minute walk from the Bab Ainzleten. It has five suites on two storeys set Andalusian-style around a tiled patio. Our suite has a spacious sleeping area with a large marble bathroom and an upper lounge complete with 500+ satellite channels, some actually in English. The restaurant at the Clef Verde next door serves wonderful Moroccan food with a spectacular rooftop view.
Living it up at Riad des Remparts de Fez
Compared to Fez, the medina at Tétouan is a mere mini-mart. Once through the Bab Ainzleten you enter a world more colorful and magical that the Land of Oz. Getting lost is a certainty, even if you follow the color-coded “trail signs” and there is the likelihood of getting squished against the wall by an overloaded donkey. At least there are no camels today although many side alleys still have a wooden bar that would have stopped camels from entering.
Donkeys can be dangerous to your health
Traditional Moroccan shoes
Inside, the medina is much like any other, a maze of narrow alleys, dead ends, tiny shops and strange smells. Except this one is on steroids, almost a square kilometer with at least three mosques (Muslims only) and all manner of souks. We headed, more or less, towards the Chouara Tannery, the oldest in Morocco. You need to climb to the rooftop of the leather store to see the tannery, picking up a sprig of mint along the way to counteract the smell, even from 50 feet above. We were lucky that the wind was in our favor. They have been tanning leather in the same way for 1000 years. Raw skins – sheep, cow and camel – are soaked in a solution of cow piss and softened with pigeon poo. All this is done, literally, by hand. The only mechanization is a large, hand-cranked wooden cylinder – the washing machine. The dyes are natural, too; poppies for red, saffron for yellow, indigo for blue and the same mascara used on women’s eyes for black.
