Fes the strange and wonderful

Hostelling is great because even if you're travelling alone, it seems there's always some way to make friends with your fellow solo backpackers and wander around the city with them. That's exactly what I did - banded together with a group of other people travelling alone, and hit up the city.

Being in a city as old as Fes and having a medina as ancient as it is, it's easy to forget that you're in the 21st century at all. So when we decided to head to Fes's New Town, I think it was safe to say that it was not at all what I was expecting.



Perfectly landscaped boulevards with paved roads and even a retinue of guards.



Back again at the palace, watching local Moroccan people go about their everyday lives in their traditional Moroccan costume, the djellaba.





Always being awed by the intricacy of design in the mosaicked gates and yellow earth walls, and how they contrasted against the clear blue sky.



We headed to the top of a hill which held the ruin of the Tombe dei Merenidi.





We looked out over the sprawling chaos of Fes, again, stretching out as far as the eye could see.



Spring seemed to be in full swing, for which the birds were chirping and the flowers were out in bloom. I thought the flowers were all the more beautiful for being wildflowers - a riot of colour, purple white and yellow.





I thought it was pretty cool that even after all that passage of time, there were still archways standing.





Somewhere along the way back down to the medina, we happened to pass by the dodgiest hostel sign ever.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="700"] Seems legit.[/caption]

In the medina, there were carts full of mini-tajines and other tourist souvenirs.



Saying no to shopping is always hard, especially when you're looking at ceramics and pottery like this.



Fes is a city full of cats. And I really do mean, full of them. I love cats, so I was squealing every time I saw one - which seemed to be something like every 5 minutes.

I mean, would you look at this darling kitten I found sleeping by the side of the street?!



I wanted to take her home, but I don't think she would have fared terribly well in my luggage.



We passed by some perfectly manicured public gardens.



Walked a little further down and found ourselves back on a busy road.



We found donkeys casually grazing on the sides of the road, right in front of the medina walls.



I saw donkeys being used around the Fes medina, pulling carts through the narrow and uneven streets. I don't know if there's anywhere else in the world where you don't look out for cars, but for donkeys. Also, donkeys here share a road with cars and other vehicles.



At least this little brown guy was friendly.



As wonderful as Fes was, there were moments that were just downright disturbing. While I was walking with one of my friends, I got accosted by a fake tour guide who wouldn't stop leaving me alone.

(Even if the tour guides say at first "No money no money," they'll come up to you afterwards and insist on some sort of monetary compensation - and I really didn't want to pay for a tour that I wasn't all that interested in.)

That, and this guy was just being ridiculously annoying. You see, I'm the sort of person who is usually pretty patient with most things - but if there's something I don't want, I'm firm about it. With this guy following me around even after we had repeatedly told him no over and over again, it was starting to piss me off. With this guy, it took effort to try to remain civil and polite.

After some 10 minutes of him following me wherever I was going, I finally told him to piss off after he took my hand and tried to kiss it.

Kiss my hand! Seriously! Eww, gross, no thank you.

But even as strange as some things in Fes are, I guess it is all in all a really nice city - old ancient and somehow seemingly stuck in time.



Just as long as there aren't any hand-kissing fake tour guides.