Day 23: October 23

Somewhere halfway, we stop in a small town to have tea. The town is very colorful and bustling. We sit at a café at a table outside, order tea, and watch the life of the town.

We are passing through the city of Ifrane. It is called the Moroccan Switzerland. There is a ski resort here. The city itself doesn’t look like Morocco at all. It really feels as if you were driving somewhere in Europe. On both sides of the road there are beautiful large mansions.

This morning it was clear, but gradually clouds rolled in, and now we have driven into a huge cloud. Visibility is very poor. Oncoming cars and trees suddenly emerge from the mist, and the atmosphere is like in horror movies.

The cars are moving slowly. We can barely see the car driving in front of us a couple of meters away. We keep going like this for an endlessly long time. It seems that this cloud will never end. But then, suddenly, it clears. It feels as if someone has wiped the lenses of fogged-up glasses. The world slowly begins to appear. We speed up.

But we still enter Fez when it is already almost dark. There are a huge number of cars here. So many taxis. There is absolutely no driving culture. Barely making our way through traffic jams and endless traffic lights, we arrive at the walls of the medina. We park our car and go looking for the hotel.

A medina is what they call the old part of the city in Morocco, most often surrounded by a wall. In the medina the streets are very narrow, and the only means of transport there are donkeys (though mopeds are slowly beginning to creep in too, unfortunately). Our hotel is theoretically located right at the entrance to the medina. We chose it specifically so we wouldn’t have too far to walk from the parking lot.

The hotel is located in a riad — a typical Moroccan building with an inner courtyard, onto which the room windows most often face. The inner courtyard is very beautiful. In the center hangs a magnificent bronze chandelier, and the interior is complemented by soft sofas and tables with tablecloths. We sit down, enveloped by a warm honey-colored light, and mint tea with cookies is brought to us — a treat for newly arrived guests.

And our little room is very modest, tiny, with only a bed and a wardrobe. After such a magnificent inner courtyard, it seems like a mockery; Volchiy suggested that it used to be a servant’s room.

It was already completely dark, but we still decide to take a little walk. The streets are deserted. Everything is closed; only a few lonely shops are open, with sleepy vendors. We buy some bread and return to our room.