After our recent shake-ups in Er-Rachidia and Rissani, and mentally prepared by our guide book, we both donned our emotional battle-armour and entered the Fez medina ready for a carpet-fight. However, there was none to be had. As we soon learnt, this town is much more relaxed than is written. Friendly, even.

Fez has a nice medina with lots of artisan souqs, in which we had a pleasant time wandering. Clearly, the shopkeepers here are more in-tune with doing business with Westerners: Happily, we never found ourselves on the receiving end of a hard-sell or unsolicited, irrational aggression nor violent mood-swinging that we have so often met in our travels elsewhere in the country. What a breath of fresh air!

Our guide book had warned us that the leather and rug salesmen in Fez were the most persistent in the country and could sell a leather bag to a vegan. Not so. We even walked away empty handed and unscathed from the leather tanneries — which can only be accessed via a long, winding maze of leather goods pushing all-things-leather.

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