![\"\"](\"http:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/16290-1_1.jpg\" "\\"16290-1_1\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI mean real, ski resort snow.<\/p>\n We knew before we came to Morocco that it gets some snow. In some of the higher bits, at certain times of year… But we weren’t expecting anything like this… Not this deep and not this low in the mountains. It just got deeper and deeper until it was covering everything and I felt like I was on a bus in Tahoe, Hotham, Niseko or anywhere else I’ve been snowboarding. The power lines out in the fog even looked like ski lifts… It was completely surreal.<\/p>\n It was one of the highlights of the trip for me, and also I think for most of our fellow passengers.\u00a0Both adults and children were running through the snow in every village we passed.. all the locals (both on and off the bus) had their cameras or phones out, and almost every car, truck or bus that passed us going the other way had a passenger (or driver!) who was filming through the windshield.<\/p>\n Some people probably wouldn’t think it was a big deal… to see snow somewhere it hasn’t been for a decade, but when I see snow I get this big stupid grin on my face. I’m filled with this sense of wonder and serenity and I kind of feel like a child again, which makes no sense because I was about 16 the first time I saw snow…<\/p>\n But to see that same grin, that same sense of wonder on the faces of dozens of people who travel this route all the time… On the faces of children playing in possibly the first snow they’ve ever seen? To me that was priceless.<\/p>\n After a beautiful hour on the road the snow started to thin and we made our way to a lower altitude…. You can see how windy the road is below. It was just as harrowing as it looks but totally worth it:<\/p>\n We arrived back in Marrakech at about 6pm, played walk away hardball with the taxi touts until we got a good price and then went to some random hotel in the lonely planet, hoping they would have a free room, which luckily they did. They also had internet access so we were able to finally check our flights and confirm we could move the first one, Casablanca to Dubai, forwards by 3 days (thanks dad!). The next morning we went straight to the train station and caught a seven hour train to Fes.<\/p>\n The train trip was quite pleasant, partly due to our decision to purchase first class tickets. They were only like $10 (aud) more and gave us more comfortable, set seats, which meant we didn’t need to rush on to the train to secure a good spot.<\/p>\n When we got to Fes we had some more taxi games but once a driver latched on to us the others all gathered around and just kept saying 50d was fair and we should just pay him. I got sick of their pack mentality and told the whole group that someone was getting 20d to take us to the blue gate. I didn’t care who was getting it, but that’s all they were getting.<\/p>\n Suddenly we had a driver and we were on our way.<\/p>\n The lonely planet and all of our research had told us that while Fes is indeed a massive, sprawling city, it doesn’t actually have much going on other than the Medina, and our ride in the taxi only helped confirm this was the case, so I felt more comfortable with only having a day here. We arrived at the Blue Gate and armed with our handwritten directions, we plunged into the winding streets to find our riad<\/p>\n It turned out to be fairly easy to find and was really well located, with a nice room that had an awesome upstairs ensuite designed especially for dwarves like me:<\/p>\n And a great roof terrace which had some amazing views as the sun was setting:<\/p>\n We spent most of the next day exploring the Medina and just getting lost in the streets, looking at shops and old monuments. We stopped for a drink in this tiny cafe that had a roof terrace and I was able to get some great photos:<\/p>\n That photo above shows one of the smaller squares (the copper square) but in general the streets in the Fes Medina are all fairly narrow and part of its appeal is that cars, bikes and scooters can’t fit down the streets and aren’t allowed on the few streets that could fit them. The other cool thing is that the city is so old and the streets so narrow that they need to build elaborate timber braces to keep the buildings from collapsing on each other and blocking the tiny streets, which are sometimes empty:<\/p>\n And sometimes seething with people. For example, this street was 10m from our hostel:<\/p>\n And this was the 10m stretch that lead to our hostel:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n