From Sevilla to Tangier

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Alive and well in Tangier. We got in about 4:30 this afternoon. Interesting place, makes the winding streets of Spain look positively organized. I'd heard bad things about Tangier from a few people, but I like it well enough. A little aggressive in terms of people trying to sell you things, or give you tour guide services you don't want, but still pretty okay really.

Tree and I met up with a couple other travellers on the bus out of Sevilla this morning, Caitlin and Iku. American and Japanese women respectively. They are both quite nice, and we are now sharing a room, and will travel together for the next few days. The more the merrier!!

We all wandered around Tangier getting thoroughly lost, trying to find a drink in a Muslim country. Eventually, we gave up trying to find a place ourselves, and decided to just take a cab to a place mentioned in a guidebook. It turned out to be inside an expensive hotel, we were decidedly underdressed, but undeterred we plunked down and had one expensive drink. We then - with some difficulty and the help of a compass - (I've got no GPS maps for Morocco) managed to find our way back to the hotel. But not before we made a few wrong turns, and wound up in weird dark narrow "streets" (very narrow), full of kids goofing off and smoking hash. We finally made it out onto the ramparts, which allowed us to get our bearings, and attract an even larger throng of kids to amuse. A little uncomfortable, but nothing that ever really felt threatening. They're just bored kids running around killing time, trying out their spanish, english, french, whatever seems to get a response.

Tomorrow we go to Chefchaouen, a small town of about 40,000, where it seems that the town (also a maze of narrow streets, but smaller) has a blue motif. I've seen pictures, it looks like walking through a fairy tale. I'll post pictures, and this will then make sense. ( or if you are curious you can go to flickr.com to see pics that are no doubt better than what I will post)

Suddenly distracted by the sound of someone doing what I guess is some Muslim prayers. Heard call to prayer today, guess I should get used to it, lots of muslim countries in my future.

Anyway, back to the plans, after one day in Chefchaouen, Then we will move on to Fes.

I am really looking forward to this, it is "the oldest still populated ancient Muslim city in the world" (whatever that means, guidebook stuff), and will be an absolute maze of crazy winding streets, noises sounds and smells. It should be very intense, and I expect we will spend an afternoon getting lost inside. Not for the claustrophobic I guess, but I can't wait. I will try to get some pics, i only took a couple on the bus going south in Spain today. I was too busy checking things out in Tangier to remember to take pics here.

For now here are a couple pics of windmills I took from the bus. (engineer in me had to snap these).

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