Vino Con Vino: Tangier and Morocco Wrap Up

Our last stop in Morocco was Tangier, completing our south to north journey. We could immediately tell that we were closer to Spain, as we heard a lot more Spanish. We could see Spain and were looking forward to heading home, mostly because we were ready. We liked Morocco; we didn’t love Morocco. This wrap up will explain why.

Tangier is a beautiful coastal city with a long history as a gateway from Europe to Africa. We visited the Tangier American Legation, which was surprisingly interesting. Morocco was the first country to recognize the newly-formed US in 1777. The Legation was a gift from the Sultan in 1821 and served as the embassy for over 140 years. It is the only US National Historic Landmark located outside of the US and now is a museum and cultural center. There is a definite “if these walls could talk” vibe, especially considering its role in supporting Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa in WWII.

We also enjoyed our time at the Ibn Battuta Memory Exhibition Space. Ibn Battuta was a Muslim traveller, explorer and scholar from Tangier. From 1325 to 1354, he visited much of Africa, Asia, and the Iberian Peninsula, travelling over 100,000 km, more than any other explorer in pre-modern history. It makes sense that Tangier’s airport is named after him.

We were happy to have sunny weather again in Tangier. The city walls and medina were scenic and fun to wander through. Overall, each city’s medina was like the last, distinguished only by the level of chaos – Marrakesh being a 10, Meknes being a 3.

After nearly 3 weeks, we were over the nearly uniform restaurant menus of Moroccan food, so we found a good pizza place. We’ve had enough tagine to last a lifetime. Tagine is quite good and healthy, but it gets boring. This is one of the only vacations where we didn’t gain weight, likely for two reasons: (1) Moroccan food is very fresh and offers lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and (2) we weren’t drinking much alcohol as it is not freely available. We did drink A LOT of amazing fresh orange juice every morning and we believe it is probably some of the best OJ we’ve ever had.

The views of white-washed walls and the sea were fantastic from our hotel and our last dinner, Moroccan food, of course.

As always, learning the history of a country is a highlight. The relationship between the native Berbers and conquering Arabs and their current overall peaceful coexistence is underwritten by some resentment by the majority Berbers. Every Berber we met was kind and open about their heritage. There is a lot of speculation about the very absent King of Morocco, who appears to spend more time in France getting medical treatment than at home.

The French influence is still strong even though Morocco has been independent since 1956. We learned that, going forward, schools will be offering more English and Chinese, which may impact the prevalence of French, but that will take decades to change. The multilingualism is impressive. Many people are trilingual or quadrilingual, speaking Arabic, French, Berber and/or English. Apparently, there are many affordable resources for children to learn languages outside the school system.

We skipped camping in the desert, which is just not our thing. Our favorite city was Essaouira. Our favorite experiences were the hot air balloon ride and walking through the ruins of Volubilis. We always felt safe. The Moroccan people are friendly and capitalists, but people always accepted our expression of disinterest in seeing their shop’s wares. It almost seemed like they had all gotten a memo: “treat the tourists well, they mean a lot to our economy.”

One last “highlight”: the (mostly stray) cats of Morocco, which are omnipresent. No one seems to mind them much; in fact, there is often food and water left for them. They make themselves comfortable – on cannons and scooters in Essaouira for example: