Tangier

This weekend was a lot of traveling! On Friday morning I took a flight to Malaga, Spain. This was one of the most gorgeous landings of my life! After I landed, I took a bus from Malaga to Algeciras. Again, an absolutely gorgeous bus ride. I couldn't take my eyes off the scenery around me. In Algeciras I stopped for some delicious paella and got on a boat to my third continent! The boat took about an hour and a half and was a stunning sunset ride. We arrived in Tangier and headed to the Airbnb. The culture shock was immediate but luckily I did a little research before going. Zoe helped me find that toilet paper would not necessarily be offered in most bathrooms. That was very true. Even our Airbnb had non so we came prepared with the tissues. French was all over. Every menu and sign had French written on it along with Arabic. We decided that was a sign to get up early and go eat some delicious French crepes for breakfast. That was the right choice because they were some of the best crepes I've ever had! After that we struggled to get cash (sorry for waking my parents up asking for help) but we finally figured it out. Not even restaurants take card in Tangier, so we had to be prepared.
We headed to meet our tour guide at 9:30. He took us to a couple viewpoints and parks and that was when we started to notice how many stray cats are in Tangier. We continued on and stopped at Cap Spartel which was another beautiful viewpoint of the beach and cliffs of Tangier. This is also the area where the Atlantic and Mediterranean meet. Here we saw four wild boars, one mother and three babies. We made our way to the Hercules Caves which was absolutely beautiful. My personal art history nerd came out here because these caves were once inhabited by neolithic people in 6000 BCE. The patterns on the cave walls were clearly created by humans and were so interesting. The cave is named the Hercules cave because of the face shaped profile it has. We met some German guys that were super fun and had just gotten to Tangier from a trip to Jordan to see Petra.
After this it was time to ride the camels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This was one of the most amazing and fun things I have ever done. It was such a cool experience and I would do it again a thousand times. We rode them on the beach and got such great views of the water. The camels were very nice and posed for the 4000 pictures I took of them. After the camel ride the tour guide told us he could drop us off anywhere in tangier. I asked to try his favorite restaurant, and he has great taste! We had some AMAZING seafood tajine. The second best part of the tour (other than the camels) was that we got all of that for 20 DOLLARS!
We spent the afternoon walking around the Kasbah and Medina areas which was filled with thousands of years of history. We went to the Kasbah museum and saw more neolithic art from the area. After that we hit up the beach for sunset and got some dinner. Turns out even if you aren't ordering Moroccan food, it will still taste like Moroccan food. We ended up with more crepes by the end of the night.
In the morning Kenna flew to Paris to start her spring break trip!! I flew back to Pisa and decided I wasn't ready to go home. I took a bus to the coast and was surprised with an all white rock beach. There was a market going on, restaurants, music, and lots of gelato. I sat on the beach and took photos for a few hours before heading home. Overall it was a very successful and fun weekend and I wish I could relive it all again!Read more