Day 2 Chefchaouen
We arrived in Tangier safe and sound and got our rental car. The only ones available were stick shifts. Luckily, we knew this and Eddie brushed up on his stick shift skills on my car before we left. We were off! Kind of. All of our printed Google maps did little good since the roads were not marked! After getting a bit turned around, we returned to the airport for a fresh start. Still halfway guessing, we finally got to a toll highway. We were going somewhere! It just ends up that that somewhere was not toward Chefchaouen! With the help of some locals, we were soon on our way.
It was smooth sailing...until we actually got to Chefchaouen. We ended up turned around trying to find the correct gate to park at outside of the medina. A medina is the historic section of town that consists of a walled off area of narrow streets. As is common in the medinas, we paid a local to show us where to park and walk us to our guesthouse. Chefchaouen is built on the side of a hill so our hike from the car was excellent cardio especially with our packs. The guesthouse, was extremely odd due to the disorganized owner but it had an amazing rooftop terrace. Completely tolerable for a night!
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| Rooftop View |
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| Rooftop |
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| View Down Into the Neighborhood |
Chefchaouen is an absolutely lovely town that is completely blue washed. Until the 1950s, as a general rule, non-Muslims were not allowed. I read somewhere that of the three non-Muslims that had made it there before the ban ended, one was poisoned. Chefchaouen is now completely open for all tourists. We headed out and walked around in awe of the serene blue beauty.
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| Chefchaouen street scene |
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| Cats of Chefchaouen |
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| Another beautiful sight |
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| Fountain |
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| So much color! |
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| Dyes |
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| Another narrow blue street |
We finally arrived in a main square and settled down at one of the outdoor restaurants overlooking the Kasbah. We ordered a pizza and our first tanjine - lemon chicken. The tanjine dish is named after the pot in which it is cooked. While not our favorite tanjine in Morocco, it was a good start.
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| Square where we had dinner |
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| Mosque in the square |
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| Kasbah |
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| Typical olive appetizer |
We headed back to our guesthouse before dark in anticipation of our early start to Fes the next day!
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