Fes

 I paired with Tory from North Carolina who I met in the Sahara tour to travel to Fes. At the first night, we spent more than half hour to find Hostel Amir in a tiny alley and checked in this  “ghost” hostel (no one else but us, unmade beds, spoiled food in the kitchen). We escaped to Riad Verus as soon as we could the second morning to this friendly, warm, and welcoming hostel with roof terrace of the city views. They are having a Berber music event tonight. “The Berbers are the indigenous, pre-islamic people group of Morocco…. Berbers call themselves the Amazight, meaning "free people." In Morocco, Berbers today make up 40-45% of the population. They live mostly in remote areas of the Atlas mountains of Morocco. This isolation has contributed to the preservation of Berber musical traditions through the centuries.“ Berber instruments include Bendir (a wood-framed drum), Nai (a reed flute), Rabab (very similar to the lute), etc., but tonight’s performance involved only different types of drums and singing. I photoed with the musicians after the performance.

Since Tory has a stomach flu, we got him some medicine and only visited the leather factory and the medina (Old City) full of dried fruit, leather goods, ceramics, textiles and food stalls) today.  The leather factory smelt so bad that we left immediately without looking into so called colorful leather-dying pits according to the tourist information.  The leather factory features leather-making techniques unchanged since the Middle Ages. 

Fez is one of the imperial cities of Morocco, and is famous for its confusing maze-like alleys (we got lost a few times) and being home to the world's oldest university, the University of al-Qarawiyyin (established in 859 AD). We did not visit the university, but chatted with three students originated from Singapore and majoring in Islamic law. Fes was an ancient walled city, which many compare to the walled city of Jerusalem.