The Flight and First Day in Morocco - Fes

17. September 2022

Waking up wasn't bad. I was merely surprised at the alarm. I didn't know what was going on. I turned it off and almost went back to sleep, but then I remembered.

Fuck/Yay. It was D-Day!

The ~1 hour before leaving for Italy passed quickly and I hardly knew what happened. I washed, ate breakfast, put the last things in the suitcase... and we left. We had a two-hour drive ahead of us. In the rain. We were worried that the roads might be flooded. Thank God they weren't, we were already a few minutes late anyway.

We drove and drove and drove. Leon and Zana were chatting in the back, while Dad was listening intently to the radio for any road information. I wrote this text/blog/travelogue - whatever it is. Everything was fine. Until, half an hour to our destination, my bladder woke up.

And oh hell, did it only get worse.

Of course, I said, "Wait, let's wait." I don't know why I did it, probably because I think we were behind schedule. For just a few minutes! Oh, what was wrong with me? A few minutes is not a bad delay!

10 minutes from the airport I started to really feel my bladder. But it was only 10 minutes away! Relatively to the 2-hour drive, just a little. But 10 minutes by itself? Damn it!

We finally arrived at the airport and got in, my only thought was "Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom".

We went up the escalator.

"Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom"

We reached the lobby.

"Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom"

I looked around.

The ticket windows, a restaurant.

A BATHROOM!

We headed straight for it.

And god, oh my fucking god. Bliss.

Then we met up with the rest of the group and so came the boring part of the trip. That sounds a little rude. Boring to some extent. By boring I mean sitting in the lobby. It was fun, of course! In its own way.

Still, I anticipated that this would be one of the more boring parts of the entire trip. At some point, Leon and I started debating religions at the gate. It was a nice chat.

He told me to write: "Leon says 'gas'." Here it is.

Then we waited a little longer. The floor wasn't the most comfortable, but it was all we had. Finally, rather quickly it was time to head for the boarding gate.

We looked at the time and suddenly got up, headed for the gate, stood in line, went through the gate and down to wait for the actual boarding.

Hehe. This is where we started to wonder about camels. Specifically, how many camels were we worth?

The perfect question for a trip to Morocco.

We didn't know what the world average was, so we could only figure out who among us was worth the most. This information shall be kept confidential.

Soon we were moving again: to the plane, onto the plane, and thanks to the random seat assignment, we were all over the plane.

At that moment, I realized that I hadn't been on a plane in a long time. I kind of treated it like it was a train ride. Oh my god, suddenly I couldn't wait to take off!

The plane started down the runway at 11:41.

And the acceleration came. And then we went up in the air. The takeoff was just as exciting as I remembered it from several years before. Don't mind me being excited about the plane taking off. It's been a while since I last experienced it.

As I watched the fields and buildings grow smaller and smaller out the window, I could feel the forces pulling me into the seat. I began thinking.

What humanity can do as a species. We came from nothing. And now we are so high. Literally. Pun intended.

With 3 hours of flight ahead of us, I started writing this text again. And since nothing was happening, I just wrote down the travel plan. Let me start with a disclaimer: This is far from the best plan it's not even a very good one. We had to experiment with it quite a bit, as we hadn't known if two of us would even be going.

We first flew to the city of Fes. How would we get from Fes airport to the city? We didn't know. Where exactly was our Airbnb? We didn't know.

We did know that we would spend two nights in Fes and then head to Chefchaouen in the north (the famous blue city, or as I call it - 'Yes, chef' city). We were supposed to spend the night there, and then go back south, to Meknes, and spend the night there.

The next day, two of our members would head back to Fes and board a plane to Barcelona, while the rest continued west to Rabat and Casablanca. The latter was to be our home for two nights.

Satisfied with the Atlantic Ocean, we would then head south to Marrakesh. For full five nights. For three days, though, we would be out of the city on a trip to the Sahara. Fun, fun.

Finally, we would fly from Marrakesh back to Treviso, Venice.

Alright, I'm out until Morocco.

*

This asterisk means a moment to you, but hours to me.

We had crossed the Mediterranean and were now staring down at Morocco.

Have you ever thought how hills look like someone threw a blanket on the ground - and it was a little crumpled? This is how I first saw Morocco. The landscape was also quite deserty, yellowish. More than I thought it would be. Completely different from the green Po Valley in Italy.

The next time I looked out the window, the desert was obvious. With only a few spots and bands of brown and green, most of the ground below us was shades of yellow or grey.

We landed at 14:25 or 13:25 local time.

Fes airport looked sick. And there was much more greenery around it than on the land surrounding it.

*

We wasted a lot of time because we didn't know how to proceed. We were debating buying SIM cards to buy mobile data and calls and still had no idea how we were going to get to an Airbnb in town.

Suddenly a guy appeared with one of our names written on a sign. The Airbnb owner sent us a driver! Without us even knowing it! Wow.

For €30 he drove all 7 of us and our luggage 17 km to Fes, a 30-minute drive. To us, at the time, that was insanely cheap.

Driving to the Airbnb was a real experience. The buildings we passed were a perfect mix of new, modern and crumbling ruins. It was bizarre. It reminded me of Bosnia, of Sarajevo. We drove through the new part of Fes, which had a completely modern building on one side of the street and a ruin on the other.

Anything that looked like an official building was nice. Anything private? Another world.

The traffic was what I heard southern Italy is like. Yes, they stopped at a red light. Everything else depended on who would do it first. Honking and accelerating, the lines on the road were more guidance than anything else.

Until we left New Fes and entered Old Fes. The difference was staggering.

You could tell right away that this piece was centuries old. Even the newer buildings looked ancient. The driver whizzed through alleys, through roundabouts and then we stopped, and the owner of our Airbnb was waiting for us.

We paid the driver and followed the Airbnb man to a hidden, fucking palace. It was just a door from the street. A door that opened into a private enclosed courtyard, with the building around it having 7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Next to the courtyard was a huge sitting area and at the very top we had our own private terrace surrounded by the flat roofs of the rest of the city.

We needed some time to take it all in, take a lot of pictures, relax and regenerate from the journey. It was very nice for a while. But we came here to see the city.

Rested, we left the house for the old part of town. Man, this was an experience too. The streets were narrow, and the people were super friendly, while at the same time, also a bit invasive with their offers. And unfortunately, we couldn't know who was honest with their intentions and who wasn't.

We continued through the famous 'medina' of Fes, a sort of labyrinth of streets filled with merchants. Everything and anything could be found in their small shops. From designer (fake, of course) clothes to books, from knives to traditional Moroccan clothes.

And everything had criminally low prices. One of the group bought a book for €4. Earrings were sold at €1.5 each. Really pretty earrings.

One of the streets was a kind of butcher shop as there were tons of meat around us and even live chickens! Waiting for their turn. One of us is a vegan, so we quickly rushed forward and through the street.

At one point we came across the Bab Boujloud - the Blue Gate as we nicknamed it (an ornamental Moorish gate to old Fes) and accepted an offer from one of the promoters to go to a restaurant on a terrace overlooking the said gate. The wind was blowing gently, carrying with it the chirping of birds.

The vibe was insane. The food was great! The meals were 5-6€.

After a late lunch/dinner, we went through the Blue Gate, took some pictures and continued to the walls of Fes. Under the walls was a kind of meeting place, full of people who just wandered there. We went through one of the gates in the walls and made a big circle around the royal palace which was surrounded by armed guards and slowly made our way to the Airbnb.

After succeeding in unlocking the door, we simply walked in and collapsed in the private courtyard. We just hung out, and after a while, we moved to the top of the building, to our terrace. That's how we ended the day. Tired, we went to sleep.