MOROCCO

 Tuesday, October 26^th

^{(sorry for such a long post!)}

Camel riding!  :)  So much fun!

This morning, we got up early to head to Tangier, Morocco! We took the metro (with all our huge bags) to the airport and waited in line to get checked in, had a couple minor issues with baggage (our friends checked bag was 12 pounds over the limit, whoops!), and hopped on the plane. After a quick one-hour flight, we landed in Tangier! When we were in Barcelona, we decided to look up tours in Tangier. We found a guide named Aziz who had great recommendations and looked pretty legit. My friends had their parents check out his site and agreed, so we gave him a call. We had no idea what we were in for! He said he would pick us up at the airport, transfer us to our hotel, let us freshen up a bit, and then take us out on a tour of the city for the rest of the day.

600 Dirhams, the currency they use in Morocco.
(Equal to about 55 Euro and 75 U.S. Dollars)

The view from our rooftop terrace! So amazing!

We arrived at the airport, went through passport check/security, and there was Aziz, waiting for us with a luggage cart and a big toothless smile. We were a little apprehensive at first, but warmed up pretty quickly. At this point, we had no idea just how big of a deal Aziz was. We were greeted at the van by the driver, loaded up our things, and were off to our hotel. My roommate said she was from New Jersey and Aziz replied “oh, I have a client from there. Do you know Bruce Springstein?” We all had a pretty good laugh about this little comment. Then he proceeded to tell us about his other past clients. The rock star “Sting”, the popular singing group U2, and a couple other foreign stars we have never heard of. He also lived in the U.S. for two years and worked as an interior designer for the very popular author, Danielle Steel (what?!). After this, we all felt much more at ease and saw why he had such good reviews.

Me with the famous Aziz! 

We arrived at our hotel, which is really a house with four floors and six of the cutest rooms you’ve ever seen. It was so quaint and completely decked out with Moroccan flair. One of our rooms was upgraded to a suite complete with a rooftop terrace and beautiful view of the city. The women who work here are all so nice ans sweet, even if English is the only language they do not speak. Luckily, we had Aziz to translate a bit our first time meeting everyone. We were shown our rooms and then freshened up a bit before heading out for an afternoon in Tangier with Aziz.

Our private rooftop terrace. So perfect!

Our mint tea and yummy pastries!

One of our rooms at the hotel.
 So cute and comfy!

He first took us to lunch at a local restaurant with “only the best and freshest” food in Morocco. Food is so cheap here (along with everything else) and we got a seven course meal for around 10 euro each. Seafood, salad, delicious breads, and olive spreads, vegetables, and very tasty hamburger rolls. We were so completely full by the end, as you can imagine! After lunch, we hopped back in to the van and headed off to see the different parts of Tangier. We saw the American, French and Spanish quarters, saw the Hercules cave, went to see an amazing seaside view from a five-star hotel (where Aziz once worked) and even saw a cat and dog cemetery.  Then we stopped on the side of the road to do a little camel riding. The men who owned the camels were so funny and ran along side us for almost the entire ride taking hilarious pictures. They repeated three phrases over and over: “arms up” “smile lady” “and piiicture”. An overall extremely funny experience. Aziz acquired many nicknames during our time together. A-biz, bees, bee-zizz, zeez… He randomly informed us he was rated “number two out of 200 tour guides in Morocco”. Pretty impressive, however we’re still not sure where he was getting these statistics from and not sure why he kept saying “Aziz number one” after every sight he pointed out.

A beautiful lighthouse on the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea

The beautiful hotel we were able to spend a little time at.

A little more camel time

After our driving tour, the biz took us to a famous carpet store to buy some authentic Moroccan rugs. On the wall hung pictures of all his famous “clients” and then some, take with the owner of the shop. There were also portraits of the entire current royal family, which was very cool to see. We got a tour of the huge run house, and then sat down in the largest room filled with thousands of rugs of every size, color and price. The men gave us a demonstration on how they’re made, and how durable they are. Then the madness began. They asked what color our rooms are and preceded to bring out every coordinating color. After thirty minutes of bargaining, my friends all had a run and I was still set on not spending that much. The salesmen were very adamant about getting me to purchase one and were not about to give up. I kept talking them down, just for fun, and had them down to 40 Euro for a long runner (quite my fathers daughter, huh?). It was a beautiful rug, but is completely opposite of Wisconsin farmhouse décor, so I thanked him for the great offer, and walked away with the entire shop laughing.

The beautiful rugs we were shown at the moroccan rug store. 

Next, we headed to a traditional Moroccan spice shop and got a demonstration on many different spices and ailments. The salesman/pharmacist here was so funny! We had such a good time in the spice shop. From there we headed to two more shops that sold random Moroccan items (tea pots, hookah pipes, necklaces) and another that sold fine silver jewelry.  We’re fairly confident that these shops are only in business because of Aziz and his many tourists. I’m not sure if we would have ever just stopped in them on our own. After buying a couple souvenirs, we realized it was already 10:00pm and headed back to our hotel. After an amazing day in Tangier, we went back to the hotel, made plans with Aziz for the next day, and spent the rest of the night drinking the most out of this world mint tea on our rooftop terrace. I love Morocco!