12/21/09 - Day 5

It’s our first day in Fez (we arrived yesterday night). I like it a lot better during the day –it is visually stimulating…a lot going on everywhere!

Five things from today:

1. The call to prayer is played from a minoret 5 times a day from multiple mosques…it’s something I’m not used to hearing at 5am. I guess when 99% of your population is the same religion, it’s easy to make this a part of everyone's day.

2. Alex has come to the realization that his luggage is gone; we went to look for replacement items. Since the medina is essentially one giant market we found mostly what he was looking for. He bought some levis…he tried them on in our room and came to the conclusion that they were women’s jeans. Have you seen The Office episode when Michael accidently buys the women’s suit…it reminded me of that.

3. We went to check out the water clock (built in 1357 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar_al-Magana) but found out it’s not running because “the only person who knew how to fix it, died.” Even though it wasn't working, the structure was still there so at least we got to see part of it.

4. Today we walked through the “farmers market” section of the medina. I think one of the most unusual things I saw was a bushel of goat hooves.
a. We also saw goat hair shoes for sale…they were sweet.
b. There were chickens and cats hanging out together in a souk.
i.I mentioned before that a lot of cats are running around the medina. We found out last night why there are so many cats around…we unfortunately ran into a dead rat the size of a kitten.

5. I needed to use the restroom in the restaurant where we ate dinner. I found out that you have to walk past two urinals in order to get to the women’s restroom. They were in use when I had to walk by.

a. Everywhere we’ve gone to eat we get appetizers while we’re waiting for our food. So far we’ve had olives (chili & lemon), popcorn, potato chips, chick peas in a spicy sauce, peanuts and pistachios.