Photo Friday: The Medina of Fes

Make no mistake - the medina in Fes is intimidating. Even for the most experienced shopaholic, the number of shops and their shopkeepers shouting at you to buy from them can be overwhelming.

That's not to say that deters people from wanting to buy, though. If anything, it makes you want to buy even more, just so that you have that experience of bargaining that makes you feel like a true local. Also, everything looks a thousand times more appealing when you're walking through streets full of fresh olives, fruit, vegetables, pottery, herbalist recipes, and occasionally also fresh snails.

Not that I would buy the snails though.



They also had fresh camel meat for sale. You can tell the camel meat stall because there's a camel's head hanging from the front of it.

Having just gone camel-riding a couple of days previously, I wasn't sure how to feel about seeing a dead camel's head.



There were tonnes of more normal-looking foods there too - beans and grains of all sorts. I had a fleeting moment of thought where I considered buying these things as groceries, and then I realise that might not be the wisest idea.





In some sections of the medina, we could hear people banging away at metal, their hammers shaping lifeless pieces into gorgeous copper pots, pans, teapots and cooking spoons. It was the first time I'd seen a pot being made by hand.

The banging of hammer against metal sounded like music. Like rhythmic drums beating one after the other as the metalsmiths went about their work.



There was an almost entrancing, captivating quality to watching them.



When we went to the tanneries, we were both excited and dreading it - excited because we expected them to look amazing, but dreading it because we'd heard that pigeon poop was used in the process of tanning.

The tanneries were literally going to smell like shit. I was pretty glad when we were given a sprig of mint leaves before we  entered, to hold under our nose and mask the smell. Even with the mint leaves, we could smell the stench of pigeon poop and excrement occasionally reaching our nose - but I had to admit that the smell wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been expecting.

"That's because we're nearly at the end of the process now," my guide told me. "You're lucky, two days ago the smell was even worse than this."

I had to admire the people who worked here, working all day and taking the tanning process from start to finish by hand. Their noses, I thought, must really have been desensitised to standing around in what was essentially animal excrement all day.



Yet for some reason there was an enchanting quality to how oddly photogenic the tanneries looked - vats full of colourful liquids, vegetable dyes made from herbs like turmeric, henna and mint.



The hides that were processed at the tanneries were made into leather goods of all sorts - jackets, bags, belts, shoes, and even some iPad covers. The colours looked almost unreal - almost too bright to be real leather. Each and every single piece handmade, stitching beading and all.

It took me a lot of effort to walk away without buying something, especially with babouches for €10.



As we continued walking around the medina, we found more shops selling jewellery and metalware. But really, I just want to show you this really pretty turquoise door that I found.



And also these pieces of beautiful metalware, especially this Moroccan teapot.



We kept walking around the rest of the medina, stopping where we saw beautiful things, which seemed to be just about everywhere because the architecture was gorgeous.



We saw the Blue Gate which is the entrance to the medina.







We walked down alleyway after alleyway, looking past shops selling all kinds of goods - rattan, leather, cotton jackets and rugs. I went on a mission to find the perfect pair of baggy cotton trousers.







The colours in the fabric were stunning, and I considered buying table runners just for the colour even though I had no use for them.



So I guess the most important thing to remember in Fes is really to keep a level head and not be whisked away by the multitudes of pretty things for sale.



Or you may find yourself not having enough space in your bag to take it all with you.