The highs and lows of Fez and Sefrou

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day with Loriane, a young French woman I had just met who was at the tail end of her vacation, and who has previously done some social work in Morocco. She had suggested visiting a small town outside Fez called Sefrou, nestled at the foot of some beautiful hills.

Sefrou was quite a dramatic change from being in cities, which is all I have done so far. The place was spectacular, it reminds me of certain parts of the southwest, with red rocks and deep valleys. Except here you see ancient Moroccan villages nestled on top of hills, and the town at the bottom of the hill has a Medina that is older than Fez itself. There is a small waterfall on the outskirts of town, and after seeing the waterfall we hiked up to the top of some tall, very rocky hills. We have a gorgeous view from up high (will post more pics on Facebook).

After the hike we went back down into the town (grabbing sandwiches along the way), checked out the Medina and some of the newer parts of town, and headed back. For transportation we took a "Grand Taxi," an older Mercedes in which they stuff six passengers: two on top of each other in the front bucket seat, four squished like sardines in the back.

The grand taxi drops you off at a fixed location, which happened to be on the edge of the Fez "Ville Nouvelle" (i.e., the new part of town). We walked by a McDonalds and I couldn't resist taking a picture of our friend Ron sitting on a bench. As we went geographically from high to low, I think we did the same culturally. We capped off the day with a walk around the Medina, some cheap food on the streets, and a nice look over the Medina at night.

Spending the day with a French-speaking person made me realize the importance of communication. My French is good enough to get by in most day-to-day situations (and it has gotten noticeably better since I arrived), but it is an entirely different thing trying to have a whole day worth of conversations. Loriane speaks a bit of English and a few words of Italian, but French was the language de rigeur. I have to say I found it very tiring: sometimes I wanted to blurt out entire long sentences or engage in interesting discussions, but I constantly had to pause to think of words or ask for how to say certain things. Nonetheless, it was a great day and I really enjoyed getting to spend some time in great company. But I do look forward to the predominantly Spanish-speaking population of Tangiers, and of course back to my native Italy!