Stone is an American guy from Tennessee who grew up in Las Vegas. He has been sculpting a beard and bought the moroccan get up in the attempt to pass as a Moroccan, there by evading touts.
Unfortunately, instead everyone we walked past just called him Ali Baba. I was however referred to as Cous Cous as I strolled around the medina (narrow streets within the city walls). I didn't mind to much, even if I was being jibbed for my pasty skin. Personally I think I'm rocking a bit of a tan!
After a short walk around the Medina we took a bus to the grand palace.
When we were looking around for a bus a tout came up to us, as they do every 20 seconds in Fez, we tried our newly acquired Arabic phrase 'na back sheesh' which we thought meant 'we don't have any money'. He hit the frigging roof. Shouting and swearing. So like strong men that we were, we apologised like school boys and scuttled away.
He saw us later in the day also and took the opportunity to climb out of a bus window to have another shout at us.
This was a very large Arab style palace (think Aladdin but with square roofs). We sauntered through the garden area and up to the main gate to go in.
As we did this an armed guard stepped out from beside the door. Through our joined terrible French we found that this was not actually a tourist spot but a fully functioning private palace, we swiftly slung our hook.
We then waited for about 45 minuets for a bus only to be told we needed to get that bus but from a different spot. Followed by the phrase we were hearing a lot: "welcome to Morocco" which roughly translates to: "I've just mugged you off and there is nothing you can do ha ha haa".
Eventually we got a kilo of dried fruit and got in a taxi.
We wandered around for a while in the Fez medina again and met a Moroccan guy called Tony with a huge neon blue turban -I suspect Tony was not his real name- we spoke for ages with him, his friend and two girls I had met previously on the plane about the economics and politics within morocco, including the pros and cons of having no tax or state benefits.
After this Stone and I found the Hammam, or Moroccan bath house.
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