Pension Kawtar Fes

... Around noon, Murray went to the post office to mail back to Australia the plates we bought yesterday, and an hour later, we headed out to Restaurant Batha, just up the hill from our riad, to have lunch.

Once again, the restaurant – a riad recommendation – was at the end of a dark alley and through a dirty old door, but then we stepped inside of another palace! High ceilings, with ...

... tote and swiped my Bodyglove sunglasses (that i use usually when i'm surfing), my Target-special mini-video recorder, and my celly. all things that i needed perged from my life anyway. enjoy listening to my Tangled up and Blue, Bob Dylan ringtone until the battery runs out. you forgot the charger. to my new pair of 6 dollar "RayBan" sunglasses that i got in a back alley in Fez (wait, Fez is all a back alley...in a good way ...

... where we saw locals making the ceramic tiles, cutting them for mosaics, painting the fired clay and finally finishing up in a shop (surprised?) Clambering through piles of ceramics and tagines in search of the perfect one, I settled on a serving tagine (one I cannot cook in) which depicts and arabic design in the traditional blue cobalt and the green for Islam. I am proud of this purchase and took great care in wrapping and padding it for the rest of the trip...

... Santa Claus. We finally make it back and meet Habib, the owner of the hotel who calls us in for a talk. Habib plays the part of King in these parts and floats around the hotel in white flowing, gold embroidered robes whilst giving orders to the Sahara lads he employs. Many locals sleep on the floor at his hotel and he seems to have a big heart. We have a shower, pay up our money, do the obligatory mint tea ritual, eat some Harira soup and recieve gifts of horrendous ...

... dirt roads it was full of dust inside and out, and we drove away sadly after several days of staying with these lovely people. There's not much else to recount about the trip to Marrakech other than it continued along the dry, desolate countryside to Ourzazate (where there's a couple of film studios), from where we drove up into the Atlas mountains, over a high pass, crossing over into northern Morocco, then down into the evocatively named Marrakech, which is the starting point for the rest of the trip.

'jour. Je me suis planté dans le bouquin "Histoire du Maroc depuis l'Indépendance", en co-lecture avec leur nouveau "Code de la famille" (code de transition entre la Loi Divine (ça commence vraiment par LOUANGE A DIEU SEUL! en majuscules) et les recommendations de l'ONU pour assurer la stabilité des investissements - à savoir, grosso merdo : les femmes et les enfants sont pris en charge par l'Etat sur fond de "progrès du droit humain", dans les faits ...

Straight from the Rif we got to the wonderful town of Fes, the city of the Handcrafters. We got to the medina (old part of town with tiny tiny streets) and met Mohamed who let us stay at his nice place. Since we got there on thursday night it was impossible to see all the handcrafters working cause none works on fridays , but we were able to check out the work place. They work ceramics, textile ...

... leather products from belts to bags, cushions,
etc...through the skinning, shearing, drying and dyeing of animal skins
with the help of much manpower and big vats of all-natural dyes.
Now guide books will be-cry the relationship between the tanneries
and "its smell" as a forewarning, such that a post-911 ...