Wednesday, March 18, 2015

the riads of Fez

View of Fez from our riad
Fez was a bit more intimidating a city than Chefchouen or Tangier, and after the little bus ride of horrors, it was much more tiresome to confront. We wanted to just get to the hotel as fast as we could, preferably without the penguin-waddling, angry British girl that ruined our vomatarium bus-ride of fun. The bus seemed to circle around the white-walled medina of Fez an innumerable amount of times - or at least that's what it seemed like with the walls making endless eddies inwards and outwards, unidentifiable for lack of features and gates. This was something new and incredible. On the medinas we had visited previously, the city was on both sides of the wall, having long since out-grown their artificial barriers. But with Fez, the city was well contained, partly  because of the creeks and cliffs that surrounded the old town and partly because the “new town” was quite in a separate geographical place.
That said, when we stepped out of the bus, we opted to head straight for the first taxi that wasn't chasing us with shouts of "Hey tourist!" Dodging that immediate squadron, I was able to hail a taxi in the parking lot. As I stumbled around with my very limited French the guy stared at me and then drove off. No luck there. The second guy I was able to talk to agreed to take us close enough to our hotel - being in the medina, taxis can only really take you to two main squares and you're on your own with GPS and Google maps from there. He agreed to take us for 20 dirham, which is about 2 euro. Even less than I had been willing to offer, and was less than what would have been my offer - it’s my rule to let the taxi drivers set the anchor price. I decided it best not to argue with already favorable terms. I gave him the difference as a tip, since it's always a refreshingly rare thing to deal with a nice guy in a cab.
Cinema Amal gardens and the Palais de Fes riad and restaurant (great restaurant!)
He took us all the way to the plaza with the Cinema Amal. I'm not actually sure what the place is called, since Google maps isn't overly clear on the issue. It seems as though, when labeling the medina, they trusted in tossing darts blindfolded at a map on the wall. Unfortunately, Google maps is not so open source, or I'd just go in and fix the more glaring mistakes there are, but as Obama once put it, "That's above my pay grade." As it is, the taxi driver took me to a place where we agreed could have been either Rcif plaza or where the Cinema Amal is "just over there". My GPS though was right on with La Riad Maison Verte, which was our destination. We grabbed our bags and dove straight into the alleys and tunnels that so define the Moroccan medinas, using the cell phone GPS as a kind of ball of string in case we disturbed a minotaur. Finally, we were able to get the Riad in the general area of the blue circle on my Google maps, then relied on some signs that were occasionally stapled to this corner or that, and then we successfully passed the unmarked wooden door twice, until I realized, "Ah, that's a really nice door and it's close enough to the signage, yeah?" When you're walking down the alley though, it does not look like an entrance to the nice hotel that it is, it just looks like a door to possibly someone's house, or possibly a camel market, or factory, or who knows what the hell is behind any of those doors in those bare walls of the dirt encrusted Fez medina. And therein lies what is awesome about Fez. (note: the plaza with the gardens is what's referred to as the "Cinema Amal", and if you tell a taxi driver that, that's where he'll take you.)
The courtyard of the Riad de Maison Verte
The entrance of the Riad takes you into the courtyard, a beautifully tiled shaft to the sky above, around which the rooms look down into the courtyard. There are various doors and passageways that lead up to the rooms - there are two rooms on the groundfloor that don't provide much privacy, as the windows open up to the courtyard seating area. The rooms are all fairly small - we thought ours was a hallway, until the placement of the bed made us fully understand that that, actually, was the whole room. But it was also immaculately decorated, with intricate tilework and wood carving throughout. One can easily imagine being from earlier times and seeing this as a place where minor nobility and upper class merchants might have stayed during their presence in Fez.
The rooftop of the Riad
A "riad" though, wasn't traditionally an inn - though it could have been. It was traditionally a house or a palace, with the courtyard serving as a focal point - hence the term "riad", which is Arabic for garden. The Moroccans started this style of house as an inheritance from the Roman days, with the ruins at Volubilis showing some fine examples of the ancient system. Many cultures today preserve the style too, from Romania, to Georgia, and - though I haven't been - probably in Italy, often bearing the term "Italian garden" or "Italian yard." The style leads to the surreal street design, where the windows are lacking on the lower outer walls, which allows for tighter streets without a loss of privacy. And privacy, is probably the number one factor in sustaining the style, in that Islamic culture holds it at a huge value. With a truly private place, and with a nice interior garden, the women can disrobe and relax without having to worry about the conventions of modesty and manner that she must worry about outside. Many of the riads of old have since been restored and made into hotels, so keep in mind that it's something akin to having a room in a house. Whereas the family's privacy is certainly kept, the individual's privacy might not be so much. That in mind, I would still suggest choosing a riad to stay in while traveling in Morocco, to truly get a sense of how the ancient Moroccans fared and lived, and to get a taste of authentic Moroccan architecture and style.

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