Another ceramic capital, Fes

Fes was really interesting. After getting a taxi from the train station on a very comfortable ride through Rabat, Meknes and the countryside on a very comfortable and modern double decker train, I arrived at the parking lot of where I was to be met by the Riad owner. We called a few times, and I got a bit nervous as to why there was no answer. By the time we got to the parking lot, he answered and sent someone to come pick me up.

Driss walked out of the medina smiling and welcoming as he shook my hand and introduced himself and helped me with my luggage. He was a little chubby, and so so kind. His English was really impressive and fluid.

We made our way into the medina, and it instantly had a different feel from the madness of Marrakech. I was instantly more impressed and excited to explore the souks in a more relaxing environment. We made our way down the hill to F9, a sign that helped point out a point of interest but was our turn to the Riad. We weaved left then right then left and got to the front door where almost instantly Christian, the owner of the Riad opened the door quickly in a joking fashion.

Christian was a slick Frenchman tanned to the point of looking like leather, with hair slicked back in a tiny pony tail. He was a little guy about my size, and had a very suave French accent in his English that was charming. The riad was beautiful, and upon the entry, we sat and chatted a little bit before I got shown to my room.

My room had beautiful high ceilings, spacious with a couch and a place to easily spread out. The bed was a queen size and the toilet and shower room were both separate on either side of the bed. The air conditioning was welcomed from having lugged all my items around in the heat to the Riad. I relaxed a bit and then came back downstairs. Apparently I was the only visitor in the Riad, so it was very quiet and empty, and Christian seemed excited to have a guest. We chatted more and then I went out to find a place for dinner, and went to Café Clock which was both recommended by Driss and Christian to try the camel burger. Obviously my stomach had healed at this time, so I was already back to normal and ready to eat regular food again, although Camel burgers seemed a little bit risky, I went ahead and followed the recommendation.

After making my way into the café, a team of handsome servers greeted me in this modern yet hip and rustic old venue that opened up in the middle like a riad with several floors of seating around. It was not big, but narrow and tall, with just about 4 tables surrounding the opening to downstairs. I got myself a table on the 2nd floor and checked out the menu and there it was, the camel burger. The lamb burger sounded much better, and I almost went against the recommendation, but decided to stay true to why I was there—where else can you eat camel meat??

The burger was quite dry, and I wouldn’t really have known that it was camel. It was more like a mix of beef and bison with it feeling a little bit more lean, I was surprised at the middle being pink without being juicy.

After dinner I walked around the souk a bit and then headed back to the riad to relax. I’m really enjoying just being able to be somewhere and explore with no itineraries or anything. But I also needed to sort out the last few days of my trip, so I did spend some time doing that. It’s crazy to think that this trip is almost done, well at this point it really is.

The next day I did a ramparts tour where I was driven around the perimeter of the medina to have great lookouts of the city below. It was a rip off, and completely oversold as to what I would be doing, but alas, this is what you have to come to terms with for being on your own and viewed as a tourist.

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