Skip to main content

Tangier

Tangier
Tangier a place always protrayed as as a town of iniquity and intrigue... and possibly still is but we found it all rather splendid and a delightful place to end our trip to Morocco. 

Sadly it was a short stay but worth getting up and out early for as the Medina was very pleasant... mostly not open as it was so early but we had a coffee in the Petit Soco cafe - famous for being the haunt of lots of famous people like William Borroughs and spies and secret agents.. in its time it was the place to be seen... or maybe not if you were a spy!
  We met some people from the ship who got caught out with no cash so we bailed them out... 

As the shops started to open we just wandered around the medina which was a very different experience to the one in Casablanca.  This was much more westernised but still had a very clear Moroccan style. 
The little shops were all much of a muchness but the shop keepers were friendly and mostly not pushy. We went in a carpet shop and the chap was very pleasant and showed us loads of carpets even though we were clearly not buying.   They were very lovely but not for us this time.  We bought a leather belt and some tea glasses - very restrained really. 

We didnt really get lost this time.. one it was just easier and more pleasant to navigate and also it was on a hill and we only needed to go up to get back to where we wanted to be.

There is however this low level of anxiety I get about missing the bus back to the boat and getting left behind... probably not so bad if you can walk back to the boat but niggles if have rely on shuttle bus. 
We were pleased that Tangier left us with a pleasanter idea of Morocco.... Casablanca was just s big corporate city and would have needed a week and more research to orientate and find the enjoyment in it and Agadir could have been any coastal resort in southern europe. But Tangier has allure and green spaces and an immediate connection. 

Back on the ship we danced our way out of port again at the sail away party and back out to sea... meeting darker cloudier skies - not condusive to the stargazing session planned for laterthat evening... 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....
Post a Comment
Read more