Moroccan medinas are colorful and full of character, but they wear you out pretty quickly. They're the historic part of the city, and honestly, they're pretty much the same from one place to another: everything's surrounded by this massive wall with some fancy gates and some not-so-fancy ones, and inside there's a huge market with these faceless narrow streets. There are some small regional differences though – like in Marrakesh all the buildings have this really vibrant red tone, in Casablanca they're pristine white, and in Fez the old medina is absolutely massive, so much so that not even all the little streets are mapped out. Plus the GPS signal there is pretty spotty.

Fez had the most random people coming up to me – mostly younger guys who were really trying to help me find where I needed to go. I mean, if you know which direction you're heading, you can usually figure it out on your own. But these guys start with stuff like "Hey! You're not going the wrong way, are you? Don't go down that road, it's closed! Let me show you the way." Of course there's nothing closed there. But when you've just arrived and like three people in a row are telling you it's closed, you start second-guessing yourself. Didn't happen in the other cities.

Back in the day, people only lived in the medina. When the French showed up, they really didn't like this setup at all, so they decided to build housing the European way, but outside the Arab walls. And that solved the segregation problem too, in a way – only the colonizers lived in these new houses, while Arabs stayed where they were. Eventually, wealthier Moroccans started moving into the new area and everything got mixed together. I totally get it though. Constantly wandering these cramped alleyways where scooters are zipping around all the time isn't exactly fun.