Fes

We hired a local guide to explore Fes – a good decision with only one day to see so much. He was superb, providing an interesting commentary in excellent English while leading us through back streets we would never have found – or found our way out of.

The palace gates were awesome, beautifully decorated in brass and surrounded by intricate mosaics. Of course, we couldn't go inside, but the walls, gates and boulevard leading to the gates were impressive. The palace is at the meeting of the old town and the new colonial town. From here we drove through the Jewish quarter, where the architecture was markedly different from anything else I've seen in Morocco. Most noticeable were the inset wooden balconies and wooden awnings; the balconies were a place where Jewish women could step out and be seen but only from a distance. The Jewish population of Fes no longer lives here but stereotypically, the area still boasts many gold shops which were originally Jewish owned. Our guide took great pride in telling us that in Morocco there has never been any conflict between Muslims and the Jews, who originally came here when forced by Christians to flee Europe, pushed South through Spain in the 14th century. The Jewish quarter is known as the mellah, meaning salt, derived from the Jews' use of salt for preserving meat.

We visited a ceramics co-operative where we watched every stage of production and learned about the use of pigments such as indigo, which turns from lavender to dark blue on firing. Some of the work here was gorgeous but I let logic rule so my backpack isn't now full of heavy and fragile pottery.

After viewing the city from a high vantage point we decended and entered the medina. The place is huge and in its 17 square kilometre area contains some nine and a half thousand streets. It's a maze. The streets are too narrow for cars and are therefore thronging with pedestrians, handcarts and donkeys, some of which bear loads almost the width of the streets. The walls are crumbling stone and plaster – none of that pretty white or blue here – and in many places buildings have been joined at first floor level so that streets begin to feel like tunnels. We entered through a residential area where the ground floors of most buildings housed tiny hole-in-the-wall workshops where people sewed, sawed, chipped tiles for mosaics or beat metal into ornate trays and plates.

From here we came to more of a shopping area, where some streets sold shoes and clothes, others homewares or fresh food. In a market street, fishmongers used big scissors to top and tail small fish, plates of dates and figs and apricots were stacked up and offered for free tasting. And the olives! A dozen different kinds at any one stall. Certain areas definitely kept to a theme, and in one area there were many thread, fabric and embroidery shops and here there were coloured threads, ten or twenty metres long, stretched up and down the streets, being twisted ready for embroidery. And everywhere children nipped round to bakeries with trays of home-made bread, old men pushed carts of oranges between the shoppers.

We visited a tannery, where bags and slippers and jackets of the most exquitely soft leather hung for sale in a warren of rooms up tiny flights of stairs, the whole place thick with a slightly fusty leather smell. From a floor or two up we looked down on the tanning area, where skins were bathed first in a mixture of salt, lime and pigeon droppings, then into tubs of colour where men trod the skins, stretched and trimmed them. The tubs were like a liquid filled mosaic of irregular roundish pools and looking down on this colourful, industrious scene was like a look into another world.
In a fabric workshop we saw weavers at work, creating great lengths of cotton, silk and wool in vibrant colours and muted tones. I resisted enormous throws in glorious colours, spectacular and softly inviting, but gave in when it came to the scarves. Once the salesman had wrapped me in light white cotton with a silver thread till I looked like Lawrence of Arabia, I could resist no more and chose a similar scarf in a different colour. So I've just been practising the art of turbanning that he kindly repeated for me step by step, so that I can look the part on my camel tomorrow. And hopefully keep the sun off my neck and the sand out of my nose – hey, it's not just about looking good.