Day 79, 21 September 2012, Bab to Bab and Back Again - We made an early start by local standards - out the door by 9 am. It is Friday (the Islamic equivalent of Sunday) and much quieter on the streets. There was parading last evening to honour the King and everyone seemed very subdued today. Using a map (a very small one, so as not to attract too many offers of assistance), we took off from the Bab
Boujiloud area where we are staying heading via tourist circuit signs to La Place R'cif. How hard could it be, you might ask, to follow signs from A to B? - well given that periodically the signs have been built out via roof awnings, or strategically covered with leather hides, or sometimes there are two, pointing in different directions to the same place.... harder than you might think. But we did it (cue the Queen song "We are the Champions, my friend...) Hideously lost most of the way there... but no problems finding the hidden signs on the way back. We visited some stunning monuments en route. Amongst them the Medersa Attarine (Koranic school), the Sefferine Quarter (copper souk), the henna souk, Souk Attarine ( perfume and spices souk) , the Bibliotheque Qaraouiyin and the Qaraouiyin Mosque (looked in the door), the Nejjarine square and Fountain and a couple of stunning shops doing fair impressions of galleries. We even gave in, finally, and allowed ourselves to visit a co-op leather shop in order to go to the roof terrace and see the famed Chouara Tanneries of Fez. Non - non - Monsieur - we do not want to go.... the smell, the smell. Non non Madam - there is no smell, just to look, no obligation to buy. Here... have a bunch of mint to hold under your nose... not that it smells.... Suffice it to say, as expected, dead sheep, cows and goats do actually smell. Hides soaking in vats of lye do smell. However, as I've always said, good friends will help you shift. Great friends will help you shift a body - and if we ever need to get rid of a body, these vats are the place to do it. We returned to our gate (Bab) via an entirely different (ie. correct) route. Our super cheap chicken joint was closed - so we haggled our lunch down from 45 to 30 dirhams at another venue and stocked up on nuts, peaches and grapes for tomorrow's adventure - taking the train from Fez to Tangier! Before we know it, we will be in Spain. Amazing.