Le Mirage Tangier

... dad had emailed and did not like Casablanca, so we told him to come to
Tangier early.

I ate quite a
few delicious pastries in these days (yes, on top of the Spanish donut
injection each day), the French colonisation certainly leaving its mark. Other
cakes which were more like ones in Turkey like Baclava were also everywhere.

As the time went
on, we didn’t hear anymore from dad apart from that he was thinking of coming
early. We wandered around ...

... bonjour" or "good morning" - men hanging out on the park benches along Mohammed V Avenue I also wanted to share a video of a man we visited yesterday in the kasbah, making bread the old-fashioned way. You can view it on blip.tv. http://nfls.blip.tv/#2050145 Very cool ! We also did the souks and visited Hercules Cave.

... br>We made it into town by about 10:30am, but apparently the ferry terminal was a long mile walk away. As we started hurrying down the main street with no cabs in sight, the walk seemed infinitely longer, laden as we were with backpacks, assorted other bags and the incredibly dense heavy carpet cutting my hand to shreds. Although probably only 20 minutes, the walk was a brutal one with the constant worry that the ferry might leave early. We already had our tickets in hand ...

... so. It was so gross. We finally found our way out of the traffic and we were off on the autopista headed for the coast. Most of my amigos slept the entire way. I however enjoy the peace and quite. Time to think but at the same time with friends. I just enjoyed the scenery. It´s so nice to get out of the city even just for a few hours to see trees! TREES!!!! We boarded the ferry and set off for Celta, a tiny area in Morocco that belongs to Spain ...

... we had a wander around town getting lost in the alleyways. We checked out the petit and grand socco areas and the kasbah area where the former sultans palace is. We ate little honey baklava type sweets, two bananas, a samosa and some little muffins filled with tuna and mincemeat. The muslim residents of Tangier all cover up with the hooded dress, head dress and genie shoes for the women and the long, to the floor, hoodless dressing gown type shirt ...

... I first visit the Hassan 11 mosque - it' either the largest or second largest mosque in the world and it's minaret is the tallest - 200 metres high. The main prayer hall is 20,000 sq metres (the floor is all marble) and holds up to 25,000 worshippers. The ablution hall has 41 fountains and there are 2 hammams - Moroccan and Turkish. After visiting the mosque I walk back to my hotel through the medina, which is far grittier and grungier than those of Fes and Marrakech. I ...

... Isham, qui était content qu'on vienne en vélo sans polluer son pays, mais "faites attention de ne pas polluer les esprits", les femmes sans voile ça va, mais les femmes sont des femmes: Amélie, tellement souriante au milieu de tout ça, qui entretient la conversation avec flamme "On dit comment "On dit comment" en arabe ?". Dormir dans un édifice en construction où le gardien nous aide à squatter, parce qu'il y a des femmes et des ...

... time we encountered a German family who were on holiday there. They directed us to the center of the city. There we found hoards of people and shops and delicious smells. Sneeze did some shopping and then we wandered around the Kasbah until we were a little lost. We wanted to find our way to a lookout which was supposed to be on the edge of the Kasbah. Some little boys led us through a maze of alleyways and we found ...

... a walk until i got fed up of the attention i was relieving, hopped in a cab to find the meeting point hotel, hoping to find my tour leader who can point me in the correct direction of a budget hotel. And in steps my angel with wings. Now i call Manuela this, because as i was standing in that hotel lobby, i think she sensed my lost feeling, and approached me. She, also is doing the tour and was staying at that ...

Tanger, Morocco.  We made it.  Now in Africa with another new keyboard set-up (AZERTY), so this may take longer to write than for you to read. The day before yesterday made the 24 hour trip from the hostel in Barca to a hostel in Tanger.  Tanger did not endear itself to us.  We should have known it may not be the best way to enter Africa when our ferry captain failed to complete a very straightforward parallel park (in ferry-ing terms) and we spent the next ...