Morocco Day by Day: Arrival in Tangier

In April, four friends and I took a 10 day trip to Morocco for what can only be deemed an extreme and totally awesome adventure. The next several posts shall be dedicated to this particular trip. I did take approximately 80 billion photos, so if that’s what you’re after, you really should head over to Picasa.

We took an Iberia flight, at some ungodly hour of the morning, to Tangier on 6 April. We’d heard some fairly mixed reviews of Tangier but we decided to check it out for ourselves. Many folks warned us to stay clear of it because it tends to be a bit more dangerous than other Moroccan cities and doesn’t represent the “real” Morocco. Others said they could get lost in the Medina for days on end and would be happy to explore the many cafes, night clubs, and restaurants. We wound up really enjoying it but probably would have gotten bored if we’d stayed for much longer.

The weather was absolutely perfect upon arrival and we could not have asked for a nicer place to stay. The hostel was called Dar Jameel and was a fairly close walk to the city’s main Casbah. It also featured a terrace overlooking the harbor.

After enjoying some “whiskey Berber” (or mint tea) on the terrace, we went into town to explore the medina. Unfortunately, we were a bit too late to actually get into the Casbah, but we did manage to sneak a look inside before the doors were shut.
The above photos are from the area just outside the Casbah. We stumbled through many arch ways and around several corners to find this place. We experienced our first Moroccan “guides,” or any man or child who decided he could help us find whatever it was we were trying to find. It was a bit unsettling but almost everyone left us alone after we said “no.”

The medina was fairly small, at least from what we saw. Kebabs in a local shop satisfied our hunger but not our new found need for mint tea.
This guy seemed to know it was our first day and so showed us how it’s done properly.

Back at the hostel a few of us played an epic game of Scrabble on the rooftop during prayer call. It was a bit eerie hearing the call for the first time, but was even more so at about 4am that morning. We had little choice but to get used to it quickly.