Our last day in Fes

Oct 27

To continue about the rest of our day on Friday, and our trip in general. We ended up securing a guide to take us around the new city, since the old city, where we were staying was pretty much closed for the day since it was essentially their Sabbath day. Our driver ended up being the same driver who picked us up from the airport! He took us this main palace gate, which was beautiful. We drove through the Jewish area, and then he took us up on top of this hill so we could get a view of the city from above. The last place that he took us was my absolute favorite. It was a mosaic business, where they do all the fabrication, from making it on the pottery wheel, to placing the tiles int he mold. And we got to tour it! A guy named Mohammed took us around, and let us try our hand at the pottery wheel. It was so amazing- I love mosaics, especially these. And to get a decent size table is only 2,000 USD! They ship everywhere, and I have their card, so I might be making purchases there in the future J

After the tour, we headed over to Café Clock. We had signed up for a bread making class, and this took the rest of our day/night. We worked with two cooks. Shedia (not sure on spelling) was the main cook, and Jalil was our translator. Our first task was to cut the onions, which you wouldn’t think was hard, but all the other girls couldn’t stop weeping, so I ended up cutting them all. It was really funny to see them have tears pouring down their face because of the onions. We each were in charge of a different type of hobbs (bread). In the end, we made the breakfast pancakes, plain bread, bread with camels meat, olives, onion, and parsley, and crumpet style bread. We made it completely from scratch, and then we tried taking some of it to the public oven to cook, but it was closed. We found another baker though, and he agreed to cook it for us. And the whole time we were learning Arabic words and laughing, having a ball. And then we got to eat it at the end! Jalil and Shedia prepared it on a platter for us- it was soo good. It was definitely the best day. We met a second waiter named Mohammed (common name) and were going to go out with him later, but our taxi driver couldn’t find the place, so we just headed back to the pension.  

Our train leaving Fez was at 2 in the morning, so our driver (a different one this time) picked us up from the pension around 1 am and took us to the train station. We ended up in Tanger around 7am on Saturday. And along the way, we had acquired a new friend, who was from Spain but traveling on her own for a bit. Turns out she was on the same flight to Madrid later that day, so we taxied over to the airport together.

In Madrid we split up a bit- Sarah decided to head back to Rome the same day, instead of waiting until the next morning. So Marda, Mira and I walked around Madrid. Our first goal when we got there was to eat, and after that we found a market and walked around…we didn’t do much since we were really tired. Headed back to the airport and slept there for a few hours before getting up around 3:45 am to get in line to get our boarding passes stamped. And we made it onto our flight at 6:15 am back to Rome.

Traveling with the three other girls was fantastic. We each needed eachother at some point on the trip- what I mean is that each of us was an integral part in having the trip be successful. Marda planned it, I spoke Spanish and was able to get us around Spain, Sarah is the only one old enough to rent a car so we could get to the airport, and Mira spoke French to help us in Morocco. Awesome trip full of laughter and good food and even better company.