Morocco, day eight: Fès

For some reason I was not afforded breakfast this morning as it wasn’t the usual man and – heaven forbid – a price was announced!

I thought about paying 45 dirhams for breakfast but then thought against it as I needed my small change to get me to the station. I had asked the man at reception if he wouldn't mind organising a taxi for me, but he seemed to think this a most strange request and instead suggested I take a walk up to the Grand Socco from where I could get myself a taxi easily without his involvement. This was actually the better suggestion, because I got one last look (for now) at Tangier and offered a "Rolex" before politely enquiring of an obliging forces auxiliaires policeman at the Bab Semarine whether I wanted a blue or a beige taxi to get me to the station.

I wanted a blue one, apparently, and going well above and beyond the call of duty the lovely man waved one down for me and I was bundled on my way to Tanger Ville so quickly that I didn't even have a chance to turn and thank him.

The journey in the little Dacia Sandero was enthusiastically energetic from the offset and as I looked in vain for even a hint of something resembling a seatbelt, I suggested to my driver that the standard of driving was higher than that of Paris, a comment which amused him tremendously to the point that he felt the need to test the horn. I decided it best not to ask too many distracting questions about the code de la route, there seems to be an idea of priorité à droite – unless you're coming from the left – and instead contemplated that Dacias are so cheap because they don't bother equipping them with pointless luxuries such as grab handles for passengers. However, it looks as if they can take something of a beating.

My driver was keen to chat and having steered him off world politics he was thrilled to tell me about the seven children he'd sired through two women and was concerned that I was not travelling with a small herd myself. I briefly contemplated telling him I was "it's complicated" to a finger puppet, but this meeting didn't seem to be the right moment so instead I made some deflective noises suggesting that he was clearly sufficiently well seeded for the two of us and that he should continue to enjoy making up my shortcomings. In a rare moment of clarity I felt I would rather he pay more attention to the other traffic, arriving from all directions at all times, than the issue of my loins.

Tanger Ville was opened in 2003 and replaced its previous namesake and the station of Tanger Morora, which has been closed to passenger traffic since 2018 due to the ONCF moving all passenger traffic to the new Tanger Ville. The station is a few hundred metres from the Strait of Gibraltar and one of the reasons for moving traffic from other stations was to be able to remove the rails that ran along the coast and instead make the area something more of a seaside resort. Tanger Ville is also the terminus of the new Al Boraq TGV high-speed line to Casablanca, which will eventually make high-speed train travel possible all the way to Marrakech. At the moment, this journey takes around five hours if you do Tangier to Casablanca on the Al Boraq and then connect to the slower train, or around eight if you use slower trains all the way.

The station is light, airy, and pristine, and the most part of what you see consists of marble and wood. There's a large commercial area with palm trees and a terrace overlooking the platforms, and for those travelling in first on the Al Boraq an upstairs lounge which looks quite plush. I shall be travelling in first on the Al Boraq on my return, but today I'm in a normal Al Atlas train, the ONCF equivalent of an Intercités train. In the time I had to spare, I took the opportunity of an inwi shop to add another 20G of data to my phone (100 dirhams) and then had a substitute breakfast in one of the cafés before a leisurely boarding. There was an Al Boraq in the station, resplendent in its red and green shiny livery, next to a mobile phone mast disguised (quite convincingly) as a palm tree.

Despite the attribution of a seat number and announcements reminding people about the attribution of seat numbers, I found someone already ensconced in my seat and she didn't look as if she'd appreciate being asked to move, so as it was a bit of a rubbish seat anyway I asked a train manager if I could move and was told that I could sit anywhere that was available. The first class coach was laid out in rows of two plus one big comfy chairs, so I chose an individual window seat in the direction of travel and flopped into it with a couple of bottles of water and an eagerness to see what was going to go past the window.

The trains are old SNCF units, and the seats in first are sensibly spaced such that windows are available for everyone, although some of the single seats are better than others, something the Renfe should perhaps take note of.

We left more or less on time and I watched the whole journey, to the best of my ability, from either side of the train, doing my best not to attract attention to myself – as if lovely pasty white skin and a finger puppet wasn't enough to do that – and annoy the other passengers. It is a route dominated at all times by omnipresent Rif mountains, and I was either surprised or disappointed to see that for the most part it was reassuringly not alien. Perhaps the only indication really that something was different outside the window was the occasional appearance of people working the fields by hand, the occasional donkey, and at one point – my favourite – a camel.

Approaching Asilah, we got tantalising views of the ocean as we trundled alongside the route nationale 1 for a while, but as quickly as it came we were then heading east towards Ksar el Kebir and onwards via Sidi Kacem – a railway station with its own fruiting orange trees on the platforms – to Fès.

There is plenty of spectacular scenery along the way, lush fields of argan or olive tress punctuated with occasional urban vignettes of youths hanging around in the shade, children playing with sticks in the dirt, or friends piled onto a motobécane still somehow running. Between stations, there were quite a few men to be seen riding donkeys sidesaddle, casually inspecting the curious people trundling past in their shiny metal tube, while women in various states of dress carried their wares home in the sun. I have been studying the local attitude towards personal safety, particularly that of pedestrians, and I am reassured to see that this horrifyingly lax attitude extends to rail safety, people not at all bothered at all walking across the tracks which are by all accounts in their way, while weighed down with bags of supermarket shopping or children, waiting for the train to pass so they can continue to cross.

Fès is quite the experience on arrival. Like in Tangier, the Gare de Fès-Ville is modern and airy, a ferrovian oasis between the madness of a train-load of people simply walking across the tracks to get to it and the chaos that is the taxi rank and roundabout just beyond the Place du Roi Faycal, in which various gentlemen holding up placards with European names on approached me hopeful that they’d finally found their passenger and not come to the station for nothing.

As I walked further into the throng of arriving and departing passengers and "hello, taxi, chauffeur?" drivers of red Petit Taxis, it was apparent that the atmosphere is significantly different to that of Tangier and I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it. I certainly didn’t feel I wanted to take on a taxi driver to get me to my riad, no matter how emboldened I was feeling after the success of the morning. Looking purposeful, I relieved myself of my backpack and took a seat outside La Gare, a bustling café just over the road from the taxi rank where the patron kindly fought off hawkers on my behalf and I, nursing a mint tea (eight dirhams), deliberated over how I was to get to the Fes el Bali.

I remembered that Guide had recommended I install inDrive to get to the station this morning. It needed my (Moroccan) phone number and a first name, then showed an interface similar to Bolt or Uber, neither of which are available here. My first attempt at getting a ride was unsuccessful – the driver cancelled it when I messaged in French to say I was at the station. Rather than deal with the bedlam in front of the station, I took a short stroll to a street less-frequented by taxis and asked the app for a driver. It suggested a price of 25 dirhams, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and in under five minutes my knight in shining armour had come to my aid in his grey Renault Kangoo and we were on our way through to the Bab Ryafa where we entered the old town. He got me as far as the Hôtel Batha with its ritish Saloon – the red neon B not working – before the roads were not for cars, so he rang the proprietor who came on foot out to find me. Driver offered to take 20 dirhams instead of the 25 we'd agreed in-app and refused to take more, but I insisted proclaiming that as I’d spent time figuring out the value of the coins and notes he was getting all 25 of them whether he liked it or not.

The walk to the riad was short, and once inside with the door shut all the noise and commotion suddenly disappeared. My room is on the second floor, up two flights of the marbled stairs which lead to the roof, in which a comfy double bed sits behind a stained-glass window which opens to the interior courtyard which is mostly tiles with wooden panelling. There are plenty of similar riads on the booking site of choice and after inspection of the bathroom I declared myself happy with mine.

I had a snooze.

I had barely ventured out much more than ten metres before an eager restaurateur-cum-guide-cum-purveyor of perfume in a red hat – not a tarboosh – took me to visit "some of his friends" running a female perfume cooperative before then introducing me to his restaurant where I relented and had a much-needed bowl of harira and a cup of tea while the woman of an American couple failed to understand the friendly cat's divine right to share her food. He of the red hat was determined to sell me the services of his friend, a tour guide, but I was able to resist his suggestions and despite tantalising offers of a professional massage from his qualified friend in the hammam, launched myself full-on into a first exploratory traipse around the Medina. I hadn’t got far before someone else was telling me about their friend/relative/neighbour the tour guide/masseur/astronaut, a conversation from which I carefully extricated myself by suggesting I didn’t actually want a tour, massage, or hashish, and even if I did, I’d only just arrived and really only wanted to have a little wander around.

No sooner had I got a few metres away from that conversation, someone else was telling me about their restaurant and then somehow, in a severe lapse of judgement, I found myself being dragged in the wake of a smooth-talking youth somewhere that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go anyway but was somehow powerless to resist going anyway, such was the power of persuasion that I hadn't quite prepared myself for. Despite my protestations that I wasn’t particularly keen on a guided tour of the Medina in the dark, I somehow ended up having one anyway until I decided I wasn’t happy walking around any further really and actually just wanted to go to bed.

I protested.

To give him his dues, and these are the only ones he got, he did return me to the exact place where we had started, before suggesting that a half-hour walk which I didn’t really want anyway should cost me a brown note or a blue note which, I pointed out, I didn’t have on me anyway. I’d spent my only note, a green one, on harira and tea having had the foresight not to take more money than necessary out with me, and that was reason why a note was not going to be forthcoming as I had neither agreed to nor actually wanted a guided tour. I offered some shrapnel coins – insufficient apparently – as a consolation prize and to show willing, but I remained resolute and eventually walked away, thankful that I was only a few minutes from the restaurateur with the red hat, while what I suspect were not friendly words quietened behind me.

On seeing me again a few minutes later, Red Hat suggested again that perhaps this time I was ready for a massage, but I was not really in the mood for fending off any further transactional conversation so bade my farewells and exchanged the madness of the Medina for the haven of tranquillity that is my lovely riad. It is perhaps unfair to imply that the man in the red hat had accosted me the second time, for earlier I had asked him specifically to accost me if he saw me power-marching past looking flustered.

I am determined to visit at least the university and the tanneries tomorrow, because photos of those are what led me here, but I shall have to master a firmer no, Tangier Guide suggesting that this even is far too much engagement and that I should just ignore everyone. In Tangier a nod and smile and a quick hand-to-heart was a good way of avoiding unnecessary rabbit holes, but here it appears the locals are relentlessly mercenary, so I shall have to keep myself to myself and just be a git.