Médina de Fès — Attraction in Fez

Do not buy saffron in Morroco, it is fake, a quick search for how to tell if its fake saffron "Saffron threads should not lose their red colors, fake saffron threads will turn white after a short period of time. After infusing the Saffron threads in cold water for a few minutes, take a coupe threads and place them on your finger" I'm really disappointed as we bought it from a rather large store in the middle of the medina which our tour guide took us too. Additionally, the stores use to ask for maybe double the price of a given thing, now they will ask for 10x the price and when you are about to walk away they will accept a much much lower offer, which just begs the question, if you are still making a profit how much more where you asking for, how can I ask for a price 10x lower than the original offer and still have my request accepted. The your guys get commission so if you turn up to stores (even with prices on Items, that is the tour guide price) the price you get can be up to 50% inflated, tour guides don't disclose this and sometimes suggests that because you are with a local then you get local prices. Do allot of research before you pay for anything, a slight change in shop or location with make a substantial difference to what you pay going from an affordable holiday to extortionate and if you don't check the prices first you might end up wasting allot of money when the...

Our local guide Hassan took us on a 3-4 hour tour of the Medina. We would definitely have gotten lost without him. Our tour company hired him, so he was legit. This was all on a Wednesday in March 2022. We started at a small bakery that supplies the main Medina. Our tour company told him we liked snacks, so we got fresh baked cookies, almond pastries, and cheese crackers. They were already doing pre-Ramadan baking.

Next, we visited Nejjarine fountain, the most decorated fountain in Fes (which is saying something) and saw the outer door of the caravanasri. We didn't feel like paying to tour it. Then we did pay to tour the Al Attarine Madrasa before lunch nearby (separate reviews).

After lunch, we kept walking through the medina shops, selling everything from shoes, fabric, lamps, knives, ceramics, books, all parts of meat, sunglasses (which I bought for 20DH including a case), and more. We eventually visited a fabric store with a giant horizontal loom that only men use. We learned they only use plant-based silk from agave. Two of us got basic fez hats here and another a kaftan and scarf.

Finally, we hit the famous Fes tanneries. I would definitely come back to Fes just to spend another day or two wandering and shopping in the Medina. And I would buy an entire vat of the sweet...

Fes medina is really nice to see with an OFFICIAL guide. It is really easy to get lost and sometimes your phone GPS loses signal. Unfortunately there are too many young males who purposely give you the wrong direction to go to popular locations. They will ask other people around them who will also support the claim that you are going in the wrong direction. They will continue to pester you claiming that they are trying to help. They stand around preying on people who look like tourists. From what I understand, they are trying to force you to pay them. When we went on an official tour, not a single one of these guys spoke a word to us, however when we were alone, they would approach us every 5 minutes and harass us non-stop. As you can see in the comments, it's a very regular occurrence. It's sad that the other locals never helped us when they could clearly see we were being targeted. Multiple times they agreed with the scammers that we were going in the wrong direction and fortunately we trusted Google maps and they were clearly lying. I hope Fes can clean this up. The medina relies on tourism and this is not the way to...