At long last …a wonderful night’s sleep. It was quite noisy later on but didn’t hear a thing between 11pm and 8:15am! Either it was really quiet or sheer exhaustion knocked us out.
Thinking we may have missed something yesterday, we went through a different archway this morning to the Dar el Kebira district. It was full of cats, mainly residential, and very easy to get lost in the narrow maze-like alleyways. We ended up on a market so picked up some more vegetables and some still warm bread.
Left about 11 and decided to return to Fez as it’s close by. We thought it might look quite different in the sunshine.
Found a perfect, brand new carpark only 15 minutes walk from the souks. Despite the barrier being automated and the parking area being vast and empty, it seems that we still needed a ‘guide’ to help us park. 🙄
“When are you visiting the souks? ..because my brother is a guide and he can show you around..”
‘It’s ok – we’ve been before’ seemed to do the trick.
Skirting around the outside, we wanted to return to one of the tanneries to see if they were more colourful on a sunny day. Tried to go in the way we came out last time only to be escorted by yet another guide on a ‘completely free’ look around. We just couldn’t shake him off and back on the ground floor he suggested we should give a tip to the fat lounge lizard on the settee by the door – he was in the exact same position six weeks ago!
It’s very difficult to work out who is controlling what and even more difficult to be left alone.
A lot of the little stalls were closed as it’s Friday but in a way, it made it more pleasant to walk through. As we approached the top end, passing some fruit stalls, a trike thing came down the narrow street and didn’t really fit. We dodged to the side and he knocked over a big crate of strawberries that went rolling all over everywhere, including Guy. We very nearly got the blame as the shopkeeper came out but we both pointed towards the culprit – I was still fuming that I’d had to leap out of the way to save my toes!
Back at the van, Guy has fed the local pack of dogs and asked them to be quiet overnight…I think it’s a deal.