A Tourist View of Fez

Kaberi & Vik

From time to time it is worthwhile taking a look at how the Fez medina is experienced by those who zip in for a couple of days and then fly out. Recently an Indian couple Kaberi & Vik, spent a couple of days in Fez - with a mixed reaction.

Firstly there was the experience of a guide. They asked the manager of Le Riad Maison Bleu, where they were staying, to find a guide who would show them the cultural side of Fez - not the carpet shops - a fair enough request. Here is what happened:

When we arrived in the main courtyard, we met the guide the night manager had hired for us, an older man costumed with a robe, fez and traditional slippers who was literally a walking parody of himself. During a ten-minute soliloquy where we couldn’t get a word in edgewise, he (1) insisted that we had to visit the stores in order to truly appreciate Fes, (2) repeatedly informed us that he had been on haji three times (the implication being that he was an honest man) and (3) kept grabbing Vik’s wrists in mid-conversation. Having our fill of his company and convinced there would be no easy way to manage him, we enlisted the help of the riad manager to send him on his way and replace him with a new, less colorful guide.

They also had the usual problem of owners sending them to dine in those frightful tourist trap restaurants:

We were driven to an excessively-ornate Moroccan building geared to dinner performances for French tour groups. We resigned ourselves to an expensive night of mediocre food and cheesy entertainment (think balding, pasty-white middle-aged French men being led onstage to try their hand at belly dancing) that did little to improve Vik’s opinion of the French.

You can read about Kaberi and Vik's Fez adventures here: Kaberi & Vik

Hairy Tales from the Hammam.

And we would love to know which hammam this was... Jeanne M. of Flossmoor wrote in to the Chicago Tribune...

While in Morocco recently, I visited a spa with five other women. I am African American with waist-length dreadlocks. The other women are white with varying lengths of hair. (Why this is important will be clear in a second.) We entered the facility and were taken to a room where we were given robes and told to strip down to our underpants. Then we were taken into a steam room where we were told to disrobe. We were just standing there semi-naked when a man entered and silently began filling a bucket with warm water. Then -- seemingly oblivious to our private parts -- he poured water over the heads of each of the white women. He didn't ask for their permission. He didn't say a word until he got to me. He said, 'May I do this?' I said, 'Sure,' but I wanted to laugh. Here I am halfway around the world and even he knows that you don't mess with a sister and her hair. At least not without asking permission.


Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news