Tetuan and the Blue City

After breakfast we had our 2nd review of the trip. This is a seasoned group so this is more about seeing how we saw the same situation from different angles.

Late morning we boarded our bus to Chefchaouen with a stop along the way in Tetouan. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg named the planet in Star Wars after this city. Some of the filming was done nearby.



We had a Moroccan lunch before exploring the souks. These high walled narrow passageways are home to vendors selling new but mostly used goods of almost anything you might need. This is the ultimate recycling center. Lots of cats lounged lazily on top of stairs, roofs, furniture, anything that was flat and out of the way. Dogs are considered dirty in the Muslim faith so they are much more rare than cats.





I should mention the beautiful tile work Morocco is known for that dots the walls. Lots of blues, golds and greens are arranged in starlike shapes. These tiles can date back hundreds of years depending on the area.


After emerging from the souks we boarded our bus for the main attraction in Morocco on this trip. Chefchaouen is a mountainside city that has the distinctive feature of having a high number of its buildings painted blue. We stopped at a viewing point outside the city to get a shot of the beautiful blending of the white and blue landscape.


We’re spending the next two nights in a riad in the town. Riads can appear quite plain from the outside but usually contain beautiful courtyards inside. This one also had several rooftop terraces where we looked out over the city with the setting sun as a backdrop.







After another wonderful meal we retired to our spacious rooms for a good night’s rest.

Tomorrow: Exploring the Blue City

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Benalauria

Image
 We left mid morning for our drive to the very small mountainside village of Benalauria.  How host for the day, Pepe, is trying to promote it to outsiders almost single handily. I felt like I had stepped back in time.  Our first stop was the bakery that prepares freshly baked bread for the surrounding towns. We sampled the meringues and they were amazing.   We wondered up and down (I did say it’s a mountainside village) the narrow alleyways occasionally running into a resident.  One gentleman posed for us.  He’s celebrating his 92nd birthday tomorrow.   We also ran into our fair share of cats.  Some even chose to follow us for some of stroll.  The whitewashed buildings made a nice backdrop for the flowers decorating the walls and window boxes.  And the best part: we were the only visitors the entire day! For lunch, Pepe invited us to his very small winery where he (with a little help) prepared the food.  We started with cheese, brea...
Read more

Cordoba

Image
 We left after breakfast for our trip into Cordoba. The landscape changed to rolling hills of olive, almond, and apple orchards.  Olives are king in this region both for eating and especially for its oil.  Spain is the largest olive oil producer in the world. Our main destination today is the olive oil producer Nuñez de Prado.  Our photography leader, Ira Block, shot a National Geographic story at this facility decades ago and he was anxious to return.  A family run operation, it was converted to all organic many years ago to both improve their oil and become more sustainable.  They still use old methods of production, using the old stone grinders and a gravity press to extract the oil.  After the first press, the olive past is smeared onto round mats which are stacked onto each other and then pressed to extract more oil.  No heat is used here which makes for a very high quality oil.  They export to the US and is sold both on Amazon and in Wh...
Read more