Where Uncle Ali lives, or the mysterious Fez
In December, I became a participant in the “Kudablin” project from OneTwoTrip. My subscribers were invited to choose a direction for their trip. The options were 3 cities starting with the letter “F”: Fes, Frankfurt and Florence. The majority of votes were for Morocco. So I flew to Fes!
Tap Portugal flight with a transfer in Lisbon. I flew alone with 3 seats, it was super!
Oh yes, I completely forgot about the purpose of the trip! I needed to find Uncle Ali’s house from the TV series “Clone”. Remember this one? Brazilian passions. In the story, the main character comes to Morocco to visit her uncle and lives with his family in a huge riad. I went looking for him!
The first impression of the airport is beautiful and surprisingly modern! But when I took a taxi and went to the hotel, everything fell into place. Chaotic traffic, children knocking on windows and asking for money, and a driver singing Arabic songs 🙂 When we entered the old city, the taxi driver asked for the hotel number and said that I couldn’t find it on my own. It scared me. The city of Fes has the most confusing historical city center in the WORLD! When the hotel employee arrived, we only walked for about 5 minutes, but we made 20 turns, went down and up 5 different stairs, walked along dark alleys and eventually walked into some very unremarkable door. But the hotel turned out to be stunningly beautiful! I chose Riad Rcif.
The next morning, on the advice of the hotel staff, I took a guide to the Medina. And it was right! Walking there alone would not be the best solution.
We walked along the intricate paths of the Fez Medina, saw the old city, bought some fruit from local merchants and even stopped by a Moroccan carpet store. The excursions are quite inexpensive: 3 hours with a personal guide cost me about 800 rubles.
And now about the main thing! Disappointment of the year: Uncle Ali’s house from the TV series “Clone” does not exist! Now I know this absolutely for sure. It was just a set, built and inspired by the Moroccan city of Fez. I tried to recreate it piece by piece, removed similar arches somewhere, tiles somewhere.
Disappointment of the year number two: the residents of the city of Fez have no idea what this series is! It has not been translated into Arabic or even into English. So he is simply inaccessible to them.
But doing research and finding out all this from the locals was a real thrill and a way out of your comfort zone! Thank you to OneTwoTrip for taking me on the Coodablin trip. Memories to last a lifetime!
Text and photo by: Alexandra Belyakova
