The plan was to get up early and visit the tanneries, but we had already done that, so we slept in and took it easy before wandering back into Fes medina.
The reason my friend Ali is in Morocco is he wrote his Master's thesis on these bells that the Arab kings brought back to Morocco after they conquered Spain. They originally hung in a Spanish church, but now they have been converted into lamps and they hang in the Kairouine mosque in Fes as spolia, or war booty (feel free to post corrections if I'm wrong, Ali!). Now Ali has a Fulbright scholarship to study them in person. Anyway, I edited his thesis at least twice, so I feel like I'm pretty invested in these bells, too. Seeing them was the #1 thing I wanted to do in Fes.
However, there are a couple of hurdles I had to overcome. First, I'm not a Muslim, so I'm not allowed in any of the mosques in Morocco. This is not the case in other countries, but for some reason Morocco is very serious about it. They do open the doors of the mosque at prayer time, though, in order to let everyone in, so we had to time our visit to coincide with that if I was going to see them. We ended up getting there at exactly the right time, and one of the lamps was hanging right near the entrance. With a little help from my camera's zoom, I got a pretty good picture, although Ali says you can't really see the bell part unless you're standing right under it.
Success! I was so excited!
Next, we tried to find the Belghazi Museum which I had heard was a beautiful Moroccan art museum. We ran into one of the ladies who had offered to help us the day before (not the one who took us to the wrong terrasse), and she started guiding us to the museum. It was really pointless, though, because there were actually signs with arrows telling you how to get there. I was pretty grumpy about it, since I knew she would expect us to tip her for leading us to a place we could have just gotten to by ourselves. Once we arrived, the museum was closed for restoration. Little did I know it, but this was to be a recurring theme on this vacation (dum dum DUM! Nice foreshadowing, eh?).
So, we just kind of wandered around after that trying to find the exit. I made several attempts to photograph the many donkeys laden with goods walking up and down the alleys, but I just wasn't quick enough. I finally found one who was standing still, though, and his owner let me take a picture. There are so many donkeys in the medina that they have put up donkey bars to keep them out of certain areas. I'm not sure why they want to keep them out, but they do, so every once in a while you have to duck under a huge piece of timber.
We also went into the Medersa Bou Inania. It was tiny but very pretty. I was so hot, though, I kind of just stood against the wall the whole time.
We took a little break at a restaurant, and it was so hot I started fanning myself with the ashtray.
After we were done at the medina, Ali took us up a hill outside of the city to the Merenid tombs. The Merenids were a dynasty of Moroccan rulers in the Middle Ages. Their tombs are in shambles now, but the view from the hillside is pretty amazing and well worth the cab fare up there. Ali put on his scholar cap as he explained to us about the history of the city and pointed out the oldest parts. Fes still has most of its medieval wall, and we got a really good view of it as well as the rest of the city.
That evening, Ali and Tasneem's maid Fatima prepared us a huge meal of harira which is a kind of chickpea soup, and couscous with vegetables. It was so neat to have such an authentic meal, and it was delicious on top of that. Then we all watched "The House Bunny" which was not really an authentic Moroccan experience, but it was still really fun!
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