Morocco - Fes - Medina
The entire old medina of Fes is designated a UNESCO world heritage site, and is the main reason to visit Fes. At first, it can be slightly intimidating and confusing, and many people hire a guide. It is however, entirely possible to explore the medina without a guide and still get to see everything you want. You need to be ok with occasionally not knowing where you are, don't worry through, the medina isn't that big, and you will eventually get to the edge, or to an important part that you can find on the map.


The Nejjarine fountain

When you look lost, you will invariably be offered directions or offers to guide you. Even when you aren't lost, you will occasionally have people following you trying to guide you. We generally ignored people for the most part, as they will demand money off you, and we didn't particularly want help. They may be useful for finding your way back to a main route, but we didn't try this. Most annoyingly are the calls that a route is closed. This can be very convincing in the tiny alleys, but we always found the way to be clear.

After getting lost and frustrated in the Medina on our first visit, we received a tip from some other visitors that there are walking routes marked out with signs. Once we noticed and started following these, we were able to visit all the sites we had wanted without looking lost enough to get the constant unwanted offers of guiding that occur whenever you look unsure.


Bab Bouljour - good spot for tea and starting walks


Two good points to pick up walks are at the Ain Azliten car park where the green and pink routes start, and Bab Boujloud which the blue and green walks pass by. Each colour takes you by different types of sites, the green takes you by palaces and gardens, whilst the pink visits the souks.


Signs from the blue and pink routes signaling a right turn


As well as marking out the routes with star shaped signs, the main sites have information in arabic, french and english attached to them, and there are occasionally maps showing where the route is going, and which other routes are nearby.

Some of the routes seem to be missing the occasional star, and so can be hard to follow. We found the green route in particular hard to follow, and got the pink and blue routes mixed up where they crossed. Searching down a few alleys when you are missing a direction, and you will generally eventually find the next marker.


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