The Blue City

Well, we will not be leaving Morocco without a Moroccan Berber carpet. Cornered on our first night in Chefchaouen by a pushy salesman and student of the world, Abdul, we agreed to come and visit his shop the following night for some Moroccan Berber Scotch, aka mint tea.



We spent the first evening in a lovely new Riad with all the fixings, Dar Echachaouen. Did however have to move down into the Medina to a much more modest place for the rest of the stay.


However beautiful a town Chefchaouen is, Tom and I did come to the conclusion that the fellow who authored section in the Morocco Lonely Planet most likely spent the majority of his time here pretty stoned, the green stuff being readily available, when he said it would be easy to spend a week here. Don't get me wrong, it is a great place to photograph, to enjoy the Rif Mountains and to do a little shopping close to the source, but you can only handle so much mint tea and food geared entirely to tourists. This means if you are looking for a filling meal, and you want something traditional, the tagines are not cooked in the oven, but instead the mixture of meat and vegetables has most likely been stewing on the stove for a number of days. Upon order, it is laddled over top of cold couscous. As you can tell, we are pretty excited at the prospect of the culinary delights Fès has to offer.




So, we depart this afternoon, not with the carpet though, because that was sent to Belfast this morning along with two lamps made of metal and coloured glass.


The carpet was quite the emotional purchase, for even if the friendly Moroccan salesman just wants to sit and talk to you over tea, practicing his English and teaching you about his culture, there is always one thing at the back of his mind, the sale. So we felt obligated, but got away with only one, after picking two for which he quoted about 350 Euro...yeah right.


In addition to the shopping, we also headed out of the town and up into the Rif Mountains for a half-day hike. An enjoyable hike that had us up into Berber territory passing women carrying mounds of brush, and shepards with their flocks of goat - goat cheese is the local specialty.

Lucky enough after the trek we headed to the bus station only to get the final two tickets for the 4hour trip down the mountains to the city of Fès.


Figured out the camera problem. Seems as though we have to many photos on one of our cards, so the computers are having a tough time recognizing them. We'll figure it out and get back to you with more. Enjoy the few of Chefchaouen.