Continued from Fes Day 3 Part 1.

Entrance to Al Attarine Madrasa, a 14th century school for Islamic religious studies.

Beautiful courtyard. This is very beautiful, but our very beautiful riad does dampen my excitement for this just a little bit.

That’s some legit stone carving though.

It was pretty crowded on the first floor, so we didn’t spend much time down here fighting the crowds.

As we were leaving, we heard someone talking about an upstairs….sure I guess we’ll check that out too.

These are what I believe to be the dorm rooms for the students.

They were small cells, almost like little prisons. Maybe like 5ft by 7ft.

They had all these super low windows.

Love the green tile roof.

Back in the narrow alleyways of Fes.

This is the metal worker’s souk. Lots of banging around here.

Decided to hop into a leather shop far from the main action.

Managed to get some “poofs”, what they call leather ottoman coverings. RL was wanting these as souvenirs for our three crazies back at home.

Oh look, onions. Think those are whole fava beans.

Chickens.

I guess this is where all the people in the medina buy produce. Reminds me of the old school markets in Taiwan. Used to shop at markets like this one 30-plus years ago with my mom.

Big lemons.

Unlike India, they believe in refrigeration for meats here in Morocco.

This was the only single fish stand I saw. I guess fish is not a big part of their diet in this part of Morocco.

Their version of a corner store.

Found a lunch spot, it’s in another riad. Many of the restaurants here are located inside of Riads.

Their dining room is way up on their roof terrace.

While eating here one of their staff member talked to us some. He mentioned that he would like to move to America, the land of opportunities. He met a Canadian Taiwanese girl who traveled here a few months back, hit it off and are having a long distance relationship. She’s coming to visit him in a few months and they’ll take 3 week trip around Morocco. He hopes to marry her and move to Canada and get his residency there, work for 10 to 20 years then come back to Morocco. Very idealistic. Unsure how his relationship will pan out…wish the best for hime though.

Yum, hungry let’s eat. We’ve been eating a late breakfast, and then eating a late lunch after some sightseeing.

The chocolate pudding is very good. This riad is run by a Moroccan family and the mom cooks all the food. Two of the chef’s sons also work there and they both came to talk to us as well as the other young man who wants to move to Canada. Both the sons are hoping to move to America, the elder has been applying for the green card lottery and the younger one plays piano and is really into music. They were both very sweet people.

They’ve got some fun murals here in Fes.

Our riad is straight ahead. Such an unassuming building on the outside but so beautiful on the inside. Even other Moroccan locals who know about this riad know that it’s very beautiful inside. We are going to drop off some of the gifts that we bought earlier and take a little break inside the riad. We’ve been walking around, and the souks are very stimulating to the senses.

While at the riad, RL decided that she would like to go back to the market and see if we can buy a painting from the artist in the souk earlier. OK, back into the souk we go.

The piece we decided on. We haggled, and haggled, then finally agreed on a price. It almost didn’t happen. Here’s the artist, Omar, with his work.

They are going to take it off the frame, roll it up, and we’ll get it reframed back in Austin.

The bare piece of wall on the right was where our painting used to hang. His work is really fantastic and imaginative. We see pieces like his in some of the best museums all around the world. RL was really excited to take one of his paintings home.

Look at this super cute hole in the wall kitchen.

Back in our beautiful riad.

This is perfect. Sitting inside our room blogging, drinking a beer, cool weather, listening the happenings all around Fes through the open window. Love it.

RL took a shot of me drinking a beer and enjoying the view of Fes from our room. Love this room so much. It’s definitely by far my favorite hotel room that I’ve ever stayed at. Certainly the most beautiful.

We asked the riad manager Wadih to help us source a cardboard tube to help protect the painting while we transport it. Here’s RL rerolling the painting so that it’s a little skinner in order to fit into the tube. We both feel awesome about getting the painting. It’s been rough trying to get some unique Moroccan souvenirs in the souks. No good deals to be had, not much unique stuff we could find. We decided that we’ll do more of our souvenir shopping in Marrakesh since we’ll be our last city to visit in Morocco. This would save us the logistics of having to travel by train with way too much luggage and baggage.

Dinner time. We’ve been eating Moroccan food meal after meal since the start of the trip. It’s time for something different.

Found our foot spot.

Got the best seats in the house. The only table outside covered from the slight rain that’s happening. Good people watching spot in this little square (triangle).

Oh, not labia.

The fruit seller selling out of the back of his truck is doing pretty brisk business.

Of course, mint tea.

Alright, I still got a Moroccan dish, but at least it’s different than all the other ones I’ve had. It’s Mquila.

It was very delicious, and I think has a lot of cooked down onions in it. It tasted a lot like spaghetti sauce.

RL went full non-Moroccan. They call this a burrito. It was actually quite good. We are for sure missing Tex-Mex food. Ahhh. Dinner was satisfying just to eat something different.

Fes, what a magical place. So private, so hidden, so inward facing. I bet there are so many amazing hidden gems behind these walls, inside this secret city.

This is how you transport mattresses inside the Fes old city. Man power baby.

Back at our riad.

The amazing view from our room. Gonna miss this. I believe the building right outside our window is a school. Everyday we’d hear kids out playing during their recess hours. Pre-kids I would have found it so annoying. Post kids, it just makes me miss my own kids and both of us think the sound of their cheerful voices playing is very sweet.

We decided to spend some time tonight chilling in the central courtyard of our riad tonight. It’s our last night here and we wanted to enjoy it for one last bit.

We were sitting here, and noticed that another guest had checked into the riad. The whole time we’ve been here, we shared the riad with one other guest for the first night (some big time Moroccan woman’s rights activist who has stayed here for the past two years whenever she’s in Fez). We were the only ones here the second night, and then tonight another room became occupied. In fact, the new guests are also getting served dinner in the riad tonight and Wadih has been busy serving them their dinner.

As Wadih went back and forth to facilitate dinner for the new guests, we found out that the new guests were a newly married couple who are spending their wedding night here in Riad Fes Palacete! He mentioned that newly married couples love to spend their wedding night in a riad so that they can take beautiful photos inside it. Cool. A spur of the moment idea came to my mind, I decided that we would secretly pay for the newly wed couple’s riad stay as a secret wedding gift to them. We arranged it with Wadih so that he won’t tell them of the surprise until the day the newly wed couple checks out of their riad. The wedding gift price was around $200. We felt a connection to this couple since they are celebrating their wedding here, and we are celebrating our 10 years of being married here. I hope they can take this secret gift and it’ll keep giving as they think back about it.

Here’s the awesome manager, Wadih, making arrangement for us to pay our bill and the newlywed’s bill. Apparently Wadih was also touched by our kind gesture. He immediately gave us a gift of free two nights stay at the sister riad to this riad in Cefchaouen, the blue city where he’s from. Cool. If we ever make it back to Morocco in the next few years, we’ll definitely look into that.

We were also told some history of this Riad. It was built in 1363!!! Now it’s owned by a wealthy Spaniard who spent 10 years renovating it. He comes here about 2 weeks out of the year to enjoy and keep maintaining it. Apparently the upkeep of a place like this is super expensive, and he rents it out just to offset some of the cost. I love how this place is just a person’s passion project to restore an old, beautiful, historic riad. The owners of the house stays in our room when he comes, because, well, it’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen for sure.

To be continued at Marrakesh Day 1.