Better Blogger (Morocco, part 4)

Hi guys! This week I am a better blogger, but I know I still have a long way to go. With any luck I'll be posting once a week in the coming months because I'm doing ALOT of travelling. We can talk about that later though, because today, as promised, we are wrapping up Morocco. I believe I left you in the mountains...

When we descended from on high, we ended up in an absolutely beautiful little city called Chefchaouen (pronounced Chef-chow-en). It's built in much the same way as Granada, into the side of a mountain. Granada's on the Sierra Nevada, but Chefchaouen is on the Rif Mountains. They say that the city gets alot of tourism, but from the way we got stared at I don't think they get nearly enough. I know that my short hair throws them off sometimes, but I got as much attention as that baby panda in the Madrid zoo (and we all know that I'm not nearly as cute). I have hundreds of pictures from this city because I was just about as impressed with it as it was with me:

The city as a whole, from a place where we hiked on the mountain

L to R, Elsa, Miguel, Margaret, Alex, Me, and Oscar above the city

A pretty street on the way to our hostal. They do the blue/white too

This is where our hike began

That arch is just as low as it looks. Miguel has issues with it.

This is the river that keeps the city going. That building thing there is the Maroqui equivalent of a washing machine

Again from the hike, looking down on a field of cacti

Us! L to R, Colleen (our guide), Katie, Kathy, Me, Elsa, and Nick

Another view of the river area. That patio is the Maroqui equivalent of a dryer.

This is the destination of our hike. You can only really see Kathy, Miguel, and Alex in this one.

The entire Moroccan laundromat

That's from our hostal. The door next to the cool chest-thing is mine!

Another thing we thought was interesting about not only Chefchaouen, but all the cities, is that they do very interesting things with doors. Alot of them were really tiny so what we liked to do was take pictures with Miguel in front of these doors cuz he's wicked tall. After a while he got bored so most of the doors are solo, but they're still pretty cool:

This is the only picture I have of Miguel with a door

The door as a whole is way too big, but the little door in it is way too small...

I was taller than this door

This is the house of a local artist. The entire outside is painted with murals

So before we left Chefchaouen for Spain (via Ceuta), we all had dinner at a real restaurant. We had to split into 2 tables because we were 14 people in total but only one table got in the picture:

L to R, Laura, Shanie, Miguel, Alex, Oscar, Random Guy, Elsa, and Colleen

Ok, now for some random stuff that I just have pictures of and think is interesting. First up we have the Jedi. The traditional dress of Moroccan men looks like this:

Also, Morocco uses different currency. It's called the Diram and one USD is worth about 8 diram. A Euro is worth 11 diram, so we were very rich people over there. This is what Dirams looks like:

Ballin'

So, even though I know it breaks your heart, we have to leave Morocco now because we have class on Monday. We left via Ceuta, which is a Spanish city on the coast of North Africa. You must go through border control and passpost checks and all that fun stuff in order to enter the city. We were originally worried because the guards at the border weren't letting many people pass. When we got up there they let all 14 of us through with no problem once they saw our US passports. Most important thing I learned while I was in Morocco: I'm not proud to be American, but I'm really glad that I am.

This is what Ceuta looks like. Yes, this is a billboard but we couldn't really snap pictures while we were being processed through security.

That's the rock of Gibraltar. We could see it better going from Ceuta to Algeciras than from Algeciras to Tangiers.

For daddy: They have wind power in Morocco

So thanks for bearing with me through 4 pages of Morocco. I will update you on my further travels when I have time. This week is semana santa so we don't have any classes, which means that i'll be doing alot of travelling. On Sunday I go to Nerja, on Wednesday to Marbella, and on Thursday to Sardinia! Three beaches, one week. Wish me luck!

Hasta luego!

Sara