Train that was supposed to leave at 8:00 did not leave till 8:30. All this rushing for nothing. I could have enjoyed an extra hour of sleep. But that is how life is. It is exactly when it shows you its sweet side that it deals the blow.
At this point I would like to clarify a thing. Taking the train is not cheating!!!! This entire part of the biking trip was not in the original plan of circumbikating the Mediterranean. As you can see for yourselves I’ve been biking along the Atlantic so far and I must tell you that the reason I deviated from the original plan is out of care and concern for all of you. I decided that you deserve to see this part of Morocco as well. Hence taking the train for an inland ride and back is not cheating.
Before I continue, I’ll make a comment on the people of this part of Morocco. They are different from the ones in Casablanca and the south, for which I wrote so many flattering comments. They are more aggressive and more provincial. Talking about aggression, in one day in Rabat I witnessed three fights, one of which escalated to a fist fight. Most of them do not even speak French, even at the hotel. I cannot assign something specific to them that I did not like, it is their overall manners.
I napped for the most part of the ride and by 10:45 I was in Fes. A an aside I quote that the train employee whom I asked for info was rude.
Train station
I found my way to the tourist office by asking people in the street and the employee that worked there furnished me with a map. He hardly answered any f my questions and was eager to get rid of me. I left and walked towards the medina
As I was approaching the entrance to the royal palace another tourist was walking away. I grabbed the opportunity and asked him to take a picture of me and the palace. He was eager to help.
I started a conversation with Andreas, the friendly tourist’s name, and found out that his was going to do the same things that I had in mind. So we decided to walk together. There are literally lots of economies of scale when you are touristing with other people, on top of having someone to talk to. It is a lot more pleasant. Andreas is from Dennmark and had been traveling for 7 months already in the Middle East and North Africa. He turned out to be a very pleasant fellow. One of the things that he did while in Egypt, Andreas walked from one oasis to another, a distance of 25 kms. That indeed gave me an idea. Also a valuable piece of info that Andreas gave me, which might be of use to you all, therefore I put it out, is the internet address wikitravel.com, which is the counterpart of wikipedia.com but for traveling. I haven’t looked at it yet, but it sounded promicing
Next we walked towards the Jewish quarter and visited the Jewish cemetery and the Aben Adan synagogue. Fes used to have a very vibrant Jewish community. Most of the Jews immigrated to Fes when they were expelled form Spain.
Next we tried to follow the green line on the map. There were a number of thick colored lines on my map, representing different tours in the Medina. We chose the green line.
Streets can be narrow in the Medina
A beautiful BAB
Another entrance to the royal palace
Narrow Street
Learning how to spin threads
Souq
Al Attarine, another madrasa we visited
Souq
Brass square
Sipping coffee w/ Andreas
Brass square
Street in the Medina
At around 18:00 we were both exhausted so Andreas decided to go to his hotel and me to take the train back to Riad. It was a lot easier to find my way now and made it well in time to the 18:50 train which did not leave till 19:20.
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