Oh boy, Fes! Probably my favorite place so far. It took us 11 hours by bus to get here from Essaouira (not as bad as it sounds - we got a pretty decent bus with nice seats and aircon). We ended up arriving, totally by chance, on the last night of Fes's International Sacred Music Festival. The vibe in the streets was great, but by mutual consent, we stayed in and went to bed early, tired out from the day's travel. It's amazing how just sitting on a bus or train all day can leave you so tired and drained. Poor Laura became sick almost as soon as we'd arrived. So her memories of Fes may not be quite so nice as mine! I walked around the medina and souks - I know it seems like I do this a lot, there's not much else to do in Morocco's cities! But Fes's souks were brilliant, with all the colour and diversity of Marrakech but without a lot of the hassle and annoyances. I have to make a memorable mention of my 1st hammam (traditional public baths) experience on Friday arvo. Laura and I went to a local hammam just down the street from our hotel. It was obviously a popular time as it was packed with Moroccan women with their buckets and children, busy scrubbing and splashing. We each got a massage (10mins of vigourous pummelling with the local version of an exfoliation glove, black soap and hot water) and afterwards were left 2 buckets for our use. I should explain that what you do in a hammam is basically just sit in a sauna-like room (there were 3 in our hammam, with graduating heat) and scrub yourself with the glove and soap, using a scoop bowl to rinse yourself with water from the buckets (filled from one cold and one hot basin - mix temp to your liking). And this we did happily for about 1.5 hrs. By the end, as we made our way back to our hotel, I was glowing, feeling cleaner than I had for a long time, and just with a general sense of wellbeing. Laura was also feeling a lot better by this time, and although we hadn't really done much with our time in Fes, just wandered a small section of the medina, I felt like it had been time well spent. Tomorrow we part ways as Laura heads to Spain for the next segment of her travels, and I continue in Morocco, moving on to a Rif mountain town called Chefchaoen.
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