Morocco

I have to apologize for this post being a day late.  I worked all weekend, and then went to a concert last night.  It was an iTunes Live concert; all of July iTunes has been hosting free concerts every day with various types of acts. Some, like last night's jazz groups are lesser known, and others have been more main stream, like Death Cab for Cutie.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun and a nice mellow way to end the weekend.  

So, to my pictures.  On the trip to Spain, as I think I've said, we went to Morocco.  We took a ferry from a port city in Spain to Tangier, Morocco.  The ferry was only about an hour, and it was somewhere, in luxury, between the ferry I took to Zanzibar and the ferry I took back from Zanzibar.  My sister, Alexis, will know exactly what I mean, but basically it was nice and comfortable if not overly luxurious.  And, there was no 'first class' with a big ol' spider in it!

Once we arrived in Tangier we had about six hours before we needed to be back.  We ended up hiring a guide to take us around on foot. We were very leery of doing this and being 'taken', but realized

 that there were no "Welcome to Morocco" tourist places, so we would need someone to help us nav

igate the winding streets.  We found out that most of the people off the ferry do this, and that it is just how it is done in Tangier.

We had a lovely day, and it was nice to get another Africa stamp in my passport; I had to get a new passport for this program (ugh, you know those things are good for 10 years, so um, yeah, I'm old) so I've been slowly re-filling it.     

We walked around and saw a carpet shop, a apothecary, had some traditional Moroccan tea, and ate hummus and falafel. We also found out that many movies that are set in some sort of African or desert-esq city are being filmed in Morocco.  The scene in upper picture, taken from the roof of the carpet shop, should look familiar to those who have seen the Bourne Ultimatum. Our friend, Jason Bourne, went running across the various roofs in this picture.  Blackhawk Down (a movie that I, inexplicably, love) was also shot here.

We really didn't have enough time to explore, but it was definitely enough time to 'wet our whistle' so to speak.  I'd love to go back and explore more of not only Tangier, but Northern Africa. I'd like to see how different it is from Malawi and Tanzania.  It did remind me of Stone Town in Zanzibar, probably because both cities have strong Arabic and Muslim influences.  The second picture shows how close the buildings are.  

One other thing: many of the guide books will tell you how 'dangerous' Tangier is.  We never really felt that way, and I think it goes to show that you really shouldn't put too much stock in avoiding 'dangerous' places. You just need to be careful and make smart decisions (like paying for a guide).  If we'd listened we wouldn't have been able to see how beautiful Tangier is!

Have a nice week.