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With the semester winding to a close I've been a bit travel weary. Some of my friends took of the the desert and invited me to come, but the thought of twenty hours in a bus didn't appeal to me.

With Fez just an hour away, it seemed like the best alternative. I have been to Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech and--though Marrakech gives Fez a run for its money--Fez remains my favorite big city in Morocco. I went with two friends, Katie and Karla. I had a class project with Katie and we hoped to get some useful pictures of some of the historical water clocks in Fez for our powerpoint presentation. It took us a couple of hours of wandering the medina to find that it was not possible to go inside the building that housed the clock.

Oh well--it's not like wandering the Fez medina is an unpleasant experience. Becoming immersed in the ancient maze never fails to invigorate me.

Unfortunately I saw the sexual harassment side of Morocco that I had heard American women complain about. Until this point, I had always traveled with a group of mostly men. But with Katie and Karla I heard no end of catcalls. The harassment was shameless and non-stop. The worst of it came when we were touring an ancient medrassa. Our tour guide, an old man in a turbin, kept touching Katie and Karla. I heard the girls giggling around him but it wasn't until we left and they told me that I realized how bad the harasmment had been.

Later in one of the cafe's, a Moroccan guy at a different table was sneaking pictures of the girls with his cell phone. I decided to fight fire with fire. I pulled out my Nikon D-70s and snapped a couple of him with the flash on.

We came to the big open square outside Bab al Jeloud gate and found it as full of life as the Djemaa al Fna in Marrakech had been. I bought a crunchy, layered cookie from a sweet vendor.

 After we had had our fill of the old city, we grabbed a taxi to the Marjane, which is like a Moroccan version of Wal Mart. Our mission was to find food for the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner, but we came up shy on the yams. There was no word for it in either the Arabic or the French dictionary. Katie used her French to ask for "a sweet potato that is orange inside" but that didn't get us anywhere. At least there will be stuffing.