What are the best day trips from Fes?

Fes is a brilliant base for day trips because three very different worlds sit within easy reach: imperial history to the west, mountains and forest to the south, and the road to the desert beyond. The single best day out, and the one I recommend to almost everyone, combines Meknes, Volubilis and Moulay Idriss. They cluster together about an hour west of Fes, so in one well-paced day you can wander Meknes's monumental gates and granaries, walk among the standing columns and mosaic floors of Volubilis (Morocco's finest Roman site), and look up at the whitewashed holy town of Moulay Idriss spilling across its two hills. It's history, ruins and sacred landscape in a single, satisfying loop.

For a complete change of scenery, head south into the Middle Atlas. The classic circuit takes in Ifrane — a curiously Alpine-looking town built in the 1930s with pitched roofs and a famous stone lion, nicknamed 'Little Switzerland' — and then the cedar forests around Azrou, where troops of Barbary macaques (Morocco's wild monkeys) come right up to the path. In a day you go from Fes's heat and stone to cool, green, pine-scented highlands, often with snow on the peaks in winter. It's a refreshing, family-friendly counterpoint to the medina, and the drive itself through the foothills is lovely.

The big question people ask is Chefchaouen, and I'll be straight: it's too far for a satisfying day trip from Fes. The blue city is around four hours each way by road, so a same-day return means roughly eight hours in the car for a couple of rushed hours there — a poor trade for somewhere that rewards a slow, overnight stay. If Chefchaouen is calling you (and it should), build it in as an overnight stop on the route between Fes and Tangier, or as its own two-day mini-break, rather than trying to cram it into a Fes day.

If you've got the appetite and an early start, Fes is also the northern gateway toward the desert and the great gorges. It's a long day or, far better, an overnight, but the road south through Midelt and the Ziz Valley toward Erfoud, Merzouga and the Todra and Dades gorges is spectacular. Trying to do the Sahara as a single day trip from Fes isn't realistic — the dunes are too far — but a two- or three-day loop out and back, or a one-way desert run that ends in Marrakech, is one of the best things you can do from here. Keep the genuinely close sights (Meknes/Volubilis, the Middle Atlas) for day trips, and treat the desert and Chefchaouen as overnights they deserve.