wandering around Sevilla for a semester: March 2011

It has by default become my goal to pet a stray cat everywhere I travel. Venician strays, watch out, because I'm coming your way with absolutely no fear of fleas or diseases (but with hand sanitizer in my bag if I feel like using it). The Moroccan strays know what I'm talkin' about. If I'm not forgetting any: I pet some sick-looking kitties by the stream in Chefchaouen, then a black juvenile sleeping in the sun in the market who was delightfully friendly, and then a very very pregnant cat who wandered nonchalant as anything into the port building and right on through the metal detectors. If you've never seen a wobbly bulgy cat wander nonchalantly, you're in for a treat someday.

First set of pictures: on the ferry across the Strait (about 45 minutes), arrival in Tangier, busing through the city, some camels.

Leaving Spain behind (out the back of the boat).

A new continent. And an old one.

You wouldn't believe the wind.

First glimpse of Tangier out the ferry window.

Port.

That's right. The first thing we did in Morocco was ride one very big, dirty, jaded camel.

For about ten seconds apiece.

He had no problem pooping in front of us. The camel, I mean.

This is where we rode the camel: literally in a huge open empty ownerless bit of countryside right there in the middle of the city, bordering the bay.

Very odd, its existence, I thought.

sign everywhere

more open field

Driving to lunch, through the busy city.

Having to drink only bottled water meant I never drank anything outside of mealtimes, which was a drag.

View out the window of where we ate lunch.

And down, at the vendors.

A Berber lady.

I love the facial tattooing. It usually includes words in the Berber language, and as our guide informed me, the facial tattooing is one of the sole reasons the language survives to this day, since it was repressed/stamped out in the past.

On display at the place we ate, a restaurant run by and for women .

View out the window, you can see the bay there in the distance. Tangier's like all a big hill sweeping down to the sea.

Where we ate. Some stellar couscous, let me tell ya. My first inkling that I was gonna like Moroccan food better than Spanish food.

On our way to a food market, in which I didn't take pictures, sorry. But there were lots of plucked chickens hanging on display and piles and piles of glistening olives.

This whole neighborhood had even thinner streets than Sevilla, it sometimes seemed, and even more labyrinthine.

Babybel, Coke, and Activia.

Little boy on the roof playing around with us.

Because Blogger is the lamest and least user-friendly blog site on the internet, here's a video out of order, back on the ferry, before we continue.

But now back to Tangier.

Port again.

Video from the patio of a superold hotel we visited to chat with some local students (in English). Really we spoke little Spanish the whole weekend, because all the students knew Arabic, French, and English, but rarely Spanish. It was a shame; I missed Spanish, and when it was finally time to just hang out shopping in the market, where the shopkeepers did tend to speak Spanish, it was great fun.

Strikingly similar to our own palacio.

One old door.

Design on ceiling.

Then we left Tangier... so here's a video of us driving along the bay on our way out.

Now, on the 2-hour drive to Chefchaouen. Some serious mountains for an east coast girl!

Longish video passing through the countryside: mosque, donkey, men in the long coat/habit piece of clothing that I forget the name of.

This next video is after we're already entered the sprawling city of Chefchaouen, or Chaouen as residents and everybody calls it. Oops, I put them out of order. In this one, we've just gotten out of our bus near the hotel.

And this one ends right before the bus stops (right before the video before).

Inside our hotel room (which opens onto the outside, not onto a hallway or anything). Don't even get me started on the lack of sufficient heating and unreliable hot water.

It was cute, I'll give it that. But I'm just unwilling to accept a lack of any given comfort; I really demand them all.

MORNING in this beautiful city that feels like a town. Sun rising from behind the mountains (the Rif) casts a nice shadow. It's about 9 am in this picture. Looking north.

View in the other direction (more or less south-east).

Straight west.

Part of the stream/creek/thing that springs up in the mountains and runs in down through part of the city. Women do washing there. The Junta de Andalucia actually paid for all its restoration and the washing buildings and such. They have some sort of interesting relationship with Morocco. Also, part of their relationship is that Moroccan women come work in the Spanish strawberry fields. Not sure how that goes with Spain's current high unemployment.

Door to path leading up to some private residence along this road...

And we begin our first walk through Chaouen, on our way to meet an English class at a local school!

Famous for being blue. Very, very pretty. Everyone repaints 3 or 4 times a year on specific days like holidays.

We walked to the school by a route just ABOVE the highest boundaries of the city. So great! You can see the wall there below.

An ill-wrought panorama, but effective nonetheless: view during our walk to the school. Click.

Sheep loose in the city... what else is new?

On the desk in the English classroom. Encouraging.

And then we all went off with host students to eat lunch in their homes! This was the guest living room salon thing in the house I went to with Selma and Yousra, my host girls. It was such a great great lunch: some rice egg salad thing, some more rice, and a beef and peas dish, with coke! And some odd English conversation.

Dunno if it's a general trend like it seems to be in Spain, but we ate with the TV on. It was House, but with arabic subtitles, not dubbing. I asked; that's how they do it there, unlike Spain, where TV is all dubbed. In my opinion, subtitles are the better choice, so I was fond of that aspect of Moroccan culture; but, to each its own.

The view out of their salon!

My host girls! :) Who speak Arabic and French, and are learning English.

Different portion of that stream.

Little boy got in my picture. :)

That's our hotel.

From inside the hotel grounds.

'Nother video! Turn your volume all the way up. I'm on the hotel grounds, and the sound you can distantly hear is the call to prayer.

Next set of pictures is me and Greg and Greg's hosting student Hacibe making the fifteen minute steep climb up to a really well-positioned mosque (that's not functioning right now). It's completely open and you can just climb right up the tower if you like, which of course we did!

View from atop the hill at the base of the mosque. Down in the lower right corner, see the brownish red building? Our hotel is right beside that but cut out of the picture since it's set back.

we climbed it, kinda tight going up there

Hacibe and Greg. Greg's not good with heights, so I teased him, and Hacibe showed off by putting his legs over the edge, bracing himself on the tower, etc. Nobody cried or died.

heehee I took a video of Greg's reluctant half-crawling but won't post it :)

on the way to dinner

hahaha :)

Here's a few moments of dinner. VERY loud and everyone talking at once (because that's just the way these particular TDP girls are). I think it made it rather difficult for the Moroccan students to join in - hard to understand the English.