Fes Fez The place with the little hats

     Today's visit to Fes really began with the trip preparations during breakfast.  I was not really prepared for detailed instructions at 8am, but Ahmed (Dr. Rachdi) jumped into a seat at our table with a game plan for the day.  Not just any game plan, but who would be on security detail.  Why would we need to take such precautions, you might ask?  Because we were going to a place that offers things like this:

Just another day in the Fes medina.  We passed on these guys, though.

     Actually, the Fes medina is an incredibly safe place overall, although you don't want to walk through it blindly waving money or valuables around, on the off chance there are unsavory characters about.  Because we were a large group, Ahmed laid out his idea.  We would be forming a group of guys around the women and travel up and down the 9500 alleys (sort of roads--but there are no cars) in our bunch.  Also, we would have a trustworthy, loyal guide who knew everything about the medina and Fes.  Now that we all knew the gameplan, we boarded the bus for another nauseating ride to Fes that lasted just over an hour.  It was time to meet the tour guide.  I never got his name.

     Getting his name would turn out to not be too important, because this trustworthy, loyal guide would turn out to be some shady local tour guide who attempted to take the poor lost American tourists (us) into stores he had probably already been getting kickbacks from to get us to buy there.  When he saw we weren't buying, he took off.  Yup.  Our tour guide ditched us completely.  Pretty sure Ahmed had some choice words for him, but my Moroccan Arabic is pretty rusty.  Pretty non-existent may be more like it.  This was not a problem, because this was Ahmed's hometown and he knew just where to take the girls to get kaftans.  And because the girls wanted to go, the guys went too.  This worked out just fine though, because the people that owned the store were the same people whose home we would be having lunch in.

After the kaftan shop, we formed back into our ranks.  This worked for all of five minutes (it never really worked better than that) because we had locals cutting through our group non-stop.  If the girls felt any safer, they wouldn't tell us.  Rodrigo admitted he would be the first to run away if there was a problem, anyhow.  None of them wanted him next to them.

     Lunch was another amazing meal that could have fed probably 50 people, even though there were about 21 of us.  Dish after dish after dish kept coming out and finally, when we couldn't eat anymore, the fruit showed up signaling the end of our lunch.

     The excitement of being a "guard" for the girls eventually wore off, when I realised the extent of my offering was nothing more than shooing-off toothless, 90-year-old beggar women.  I became very good at this, but I doubt yelling at homeless panhandlers in Arabic in Chicago will be very beneficial to keeping them away.  I guess it is one of those specialty skills I will file away.

     The evening ended with McFlurries for everyone.  Sometimes, there is just no avoiding McDonald's.  Especially when you are busing an hour home and it is the easiest place to stop at.

Tomorrow morning we are up early to head to Casablanca for the week.  I am not exactly ready to leave Ifrane, but it will be nice to get to our next base of operations.  Should mean a whole lot less time on the bus.  Wish us luck.