Fez

The train to Fez took almost 6 hours. If you plan to go, I suggest that if there’s a chance; get a sit on the first class as it will be more comfortable. With 35C outside, an extra 10 euros for first class was not that bad.

In Moroccan trains, you are expected to talk to your seatmates, not like in Belgium, where you just sit, keep quiet and wait. But when travelling for 6 hours, you can’t miss out talking to people. On our train to Fez, we met this man who worked for the Moroccan government and opted to talk to us to improve his English. He was nice to help us around and give us some tips, at the same time, we hoped that we helped him on his English.



Six hours came fast as we switched from talking, eating then sleeping. We got into Fez around 8 in the evening, we planned to go around the city, but as it was raining, we decided to head-off to our hostel.

We stayed in a hostel called Fes Youth Hostel, it was cheap – only 6 euros per person. But you get what you pay for, the beds are plain, the toilet is clean but looked like it was built in the 50s and the worst part was that the rooms smelled like paint. Since it was raining the entire night, we decided to get some rest to prepare for the next day.

We woke up early in the morning, and we got breakfast from our hostel which was hefty amount of freshly cooked bread. We decided to take a tour of the Fez medina and we considered getting a tour guide which our hostel manager suggested. We paid 15 euros each (we were two people)



The Fez medina, a UNESCO world heritage site, is the oldest and the most unspoiled medina in Marrakesh. Walking there felt like walking back in time, you can just feel that the place stand for ages. In Fez, we saw the famous tanneries, the first thing that comes to my mind when you speak about Morocco before. It was more exotic than Marrakesh, with everything looking authentic.





The tanneries for me were the highlight of Fes, so it was of course the place that I enjoyed seeing the most.

But even though we saw some good sites, we felt that we were tricked. Our guide, who brought us to some sites, but most of the time, he brought us to shopping places – to people selling carpets, porcelain, woodwork, metal and leather. As we didn’t have extra money – it never came to our mind that we will be buying 200 euros leather jacket. Our guide looked disappointed as we didn’t buy anything, cause I bet he will get a commission.



Our tour guide, after a few more stops, called it a day and brought us to his car to give our stuff. It was only 12 noon and as we haven’t explored Fes much, we would have opted to go around. But since we weren’t able to leave our luggage in our hostel, we have to carry it, so we decided to head on the station to catch the train to Tangier.



To summarise, Fes is an amazing city and I believe that our trip would have been eventful if we wouldn’t have chosen the wrong path to explore it.