Goodbye to Rif mountains (Day 7)

After paying for our stay in the Ouarzazate Hotel we negotiated to leave our luggage in the hotel until we left for the bus station.

Before we left Chefchaouen we still had a couple of hours to spare and first we grabbed a pancake breakfast, which was followed by a visit of the old Kasbah. It houses only a small museum, but since the entrance fee is very affordable I guess it is worth a visit.


Since the end of Ramadan was just a day ago, this meant that many Moroccans were planning to travel - usually visiting relatives.

As a precaution we bought our bus tickets a couple of days in advance. This proved to be a good idea, since the bus was fully booked way before departure. We also learned they charged us a bit differently for bus tickets each time.
This time we had to pay a bit more for our luggage. We didn't want to argue with the guy doing luggage check-in over a couple of Dirhams, so we just handed over the requested amount.

Since our next destination was one of the biggest cities in Morocco, we were a bit sad to leave this cute little town, nestled in the middle of Rif Mountains, behind. We really liked it.
Fes was next on our list and in spite of everything we were still looking forward of getting lost in its vast medieval Medina.


The bus ride to Fes went by without any problems. When we arrived to our destination it took us a while to find a decent hotel. The budget options recommended in our LP guide were either full, nonexistent (!) or really stinky.

This was at least the second time in Morocco that our LP guide let us down. The first time it was during a search for a nonexistent museum in Rabat, I was writing about in this post.

We took the only one that was acceptable by our standards (we only wanted a reasonably clean and cheap place to crash).
Hotel Royal turned out to be just that. Nothing to write home about, but served our needs perfectly for a couple of days.

It was probably a really nice place in its time... but I guess that was ages ago. We got that feeling from the generously sized bathroom with a large bath-tub and massive (yet a bit oxidized) water taps.