Greatest hits

Yesterday we spent close to 8 hours with a private guide encountering Tangier’s “greatest hits”. The day was both educational and exhausting! There’s no way to tell you everything that we did and encountered, so I’ll just have to summarize.

But first let me say that our guide, Rasheed, was fantastic. He’s a local resident who knows everything about Moroccan history and culture and did his best to enlighten us.

For example, did you know that the first country to recognize the independence of the United States was Morocco. In 1777, Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah publicly acknowledged the sovereignty of the newly formed nation. This recognition pre-dated the formal treaties signed with other European powers.

Such was the in depth level of knowledge that Rasheed shared with us as we drove all over, in and around the city.

We began the day by touring the “new city”, famous for its Mediterranean views and home to the wealthy elite as well as world class hotel chains.

Then it was time to head out of town, past king’s palaces (from several different countries) to national parks with scenic overlooks and stories of famous writers, poets, politicians and actors who all had connections to Tangier. Included in this list of notables are James Bond (Spectre) and the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion.

From there our next stop was the famous Cap Spartrl (see previous blog post).

Next up was an opportunity to visit with some of the camels that wander the country roads.

After that we visited Hercules caves, where legend says that he plotted to steal some golden apples. Incidentally, Hercules is also credited with separating the European and African continents. This is also where we encountered a monkey.

We followed that up with a walking tour of the Kasbah and the Medina market, which is actually the area where we were staying but had somehow missed so much detail when walking through by ourselves. There are some really lovely little boutique hotels (like The Kasbah Blanca) that I never would have imagined existed within the maze of streets that make up the Kasbah and Medina.

We were introduced to a nice terrace restaurant where we enjoyed, among other dishes, a tasty seven Moroccan salad platter.

On the downside, we were also introduced to the (not so attractive) meat and seafood markets that have been in place for hundreds of years and which exude an extraordinarily unpleasant aroma.

In addition, you always have to be on the lookout for pick pockets, scammers and kids riding motorcycles through the maze of narrow market alleyways.

In all fairness however, we sampled, enjoyed and eventually bought fresh fruit, bread and of course, olives from some of the vendors. Take a look at all those olives! And that’s just from one vendor!

And here’s a man cooking some sort of chick pea dish that was very popular on the streets.

It was yet another full day that left us exhausted but satisfied that we had covered a lot of ground.