Back to the Medina!

This was a long day on the bus, with a lovely stop in the Blue City, Chefchaouen. Since I've still got another 2 hours on the bus till we reach Fes, and we are traveling through an area that looks like factory farming (unlike the coast, which was tiny fields), I'll try to write some now.

Ah yes, back to the Medina of Tangier. After lunch (maybe about 2 PM), we had the rest of the day free. Diane asked if I wanted to go back to the Medina with her and her husband, Lede. The bus dropped us off and up we climbed! It was such fun! The "roads" are very narrow and wind all over the hillside. On the widest of them, you might see a motorcycle or a tuk-tuk (and you'd better be ready to jump out of the way!). The tuk-tuks I've seen here all carry cargo and look something like the image below. (This is an image I took from the internet, not one of my photos.)

But the vehicles are only on the widest passages. Most passages are narrow and slanted, or have sharp turns or stairs. And it's all a maze! We started wandering. We found an indoor market area that was different than we had seen earlier in the day—this was locals shopping for food. I don't think we saw any other tourists. I kept my camera in my sling and used my phone, asking permission of the vendors to take photos. The vendors were friendly and all motioned me okay for pictures. Generally, there were clusters of similar vendors grouped together, like the vegetables sellers, the spice vendors, the butchers, etc. It was crowded, dirty, and delightful. I could identify most of the fruits and vegetables. Most of the meats looked good (chicken and beef), but there were other meats that were photogenic and different. I didn't get to spend much time in the fish section, but it had some unique items. Oh, and the olives! How could I forget the olives!

After the food market, we wandered the maze, going in shops if they looked interesting. Like in the food market, the shops tended to be grouped by what they sold. The women's clothes were in one area, the sports clothing shops (soccer jerseys galore!) in another, the shoes in another, etc. We wandered in a women's dress shop because the caftans were so much fancier than any we had seen. We asked the vendor if they were for weddings or parties. He couldn't understand us, so he called to another shop and a man came in who could speak English. He explained that the dresses were for parties and weddings. I tried to tip him for his help—he placed the coin back in my palm and closed my hand over it, and said keep it to remember. In a really funny note, we ran into him again about 15 minutes later in a different area of the Medina. We all laughed.

We did a lot of laughing as we walked. We kept ending up in the same place, no matter which alley we took. BTW, I bought only a tiny silver box with lovely enameling. Any purchases require bargaining. It's all a game, and you have to be willing to walk away. For my tiny box, I paid just over half the asking price, so I actually probably overpaid a little—you aim for 1/3 to 1/2 of the original asking price. But, again, it was great fun. And I did walk away several times.

After we had finally had our fill, we headed back down to the waterfront and started the walk back to the hotel. It was about 2 miles, but the entire distance was by the water, so I didn't mind. People bring horses and camels to the beaches (and any other tourist site) in Tangier, to have tourists pay to ride or take pictures of the animals. There is a running joke on the bus, started by something that Abdul said, that these are not real camels. Only the camels in the desert are real camels.

I had eaten so much during the day that I skipped dinner. But I stayed up too late looking at pictures and writing this blog. And, I'm doing the same thing tonight, as I'm going to write another (hopefully short) entry about the drive today and the gorgeous Blue City of Chefchaouen.