Into the Blue

We left Tangier at 9am, early enough to beat any traffic (highly unlikely on a Saturday... even on a weekday nothing gets going until 11 am)

We stopped for morning coffee with plenty of other travellers at a cafe overlooking a dam. Tourism is slowly recovering here - there only are a handful of large buses getting around, but quite a few small vans like ours.

We travelled through the lush green crops of the Rif Mountains and arrived in Chefchaouen, the blue city, just before lunch.

Chefchaouen is traditionally an agricultural centre, also known for leather and textile handicrafts, but recently tourism has been the main income earner due to their distinctive blue buildings.

There are several theories as to why the walls were painted blue - one is that the blue keeps mosquitos away, or that blue symbolizes the sky and heaven and serves as a reminder to lead a spiritual life, or simply they were painted blue in the 1970s to attract tourists!

We met our local guide for a walk around the medina and Kasbah, including a stop for lunch of goat cheese, bread, pastries and mint tea, then walked to our hotel, just outside the medina.

After dinner in a rooftop cafe (for the record, beef tagine with prunes - and absolutely delicious), we walked up the hill behind our hotel to watch sunset over the city from the Spanish Mosque, a disused mosque built by the Spanish in 1920.Read more