Fez

Our second stop in Morocco was in The very old city of Fez. Here, we toured the Medina and the leather tanneries. The city is huge with a population of over 1 million people and comprises a few different parts, like the medina and the new city that was build by the French. Fez was founded in the 9th century and is home to the oldest university in the world. At one time, it was the capital city of Morocco and has retained its status as the country's cultural and spiritual centre. The Medina, a walled maze of tiny streets, nooks and crannies, shops, homes, mosques etc, is a Unesco world heritage site and is being preserved and there is a lot of renovation and construction taking place!

Inside the walls of the Medina, we went to see a unique bakery where individuals can take their homemade bread to have it cooked in the clay oven. Even though the houses have ovens, the locals prefer this method and will take their unbaked bread here to have it cooked.

Here are some shots of inside the Medina! Small streets, and snails for sale and the leather tannery. The leather place, made a person think twice about buying such products! The longer we stayed there, the more all I could see was death.... The stench was atrocious and there were stacks and stacks of animal skins. The men were working to dye the hides which stay in the pools of color for 10 days before being removed and left to dry. Of course, this was a typical "buy or stuff" stop. So we could see all those nice dead animal handbags!