Tangier

Last night we took the night train to Tangier, or Tanger, or Tangiers, depending on how you like to spell it. The cabins sleep four, and we share ours with a quiet pair of Australians. We weren’t sure how we’d sleep on the train, but then we hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that we wouldn’t be woken up with the call to prayer at 3:30 and 5AM. We slept beautifully and woke as we rolled in to Tangier’s train station around 7:30.

Tangier gets a bad rap. It’s a 35-minute ferry ride across the straights of Gibraltar to Spain, and is a real border town. For many backpackers crossing Europe, Taniger is a day trip to Africa, and as a result, the town is full of hustlers happy to sell you some useless trinket or pick your pockets if you’re not buying.

We judiciously avoided the port area and didn’t see any of the Tangier underbelly. By noon, in fact, we were joking that perhaps we’d sell our house in Marrakech and move to Tangier. The city is beautiful, combining many of the best attributes of other Moroccan cities: it has the rolling hills of Fez, which give most houses stunning views; it has the blue and white color palate of Essaouira, in addition to the Ocean and Sea; and it has a small but interesting medina. In addition, it has a much more varied architecture, with a variety of European influences.

We spent the morning wandering the medina and visiting the American Legation. Morocco was the first country to recognize America’s independence from England, and this building was the first embassy established by George Washington. Beautiful calligraphic correspondence on yellowed paper between GW and the Sultan of Morocco can be viewed in a glass case, as well as a funny letter from a later Consul to Washington, D.C. complaining that despite policy and his insistent refusals, the Sultan was gifting the US consulate in Tangier with a prized lion and lioness. What to do? he lamented. Send them to a zoo and risk offending the Sultan? Have them let loose in the neighborhood to assured maulings? Unfortunately, Washington’s response is not on display.

On the recommendation of friends in Marrakech, we checked into a lovely maison d’hotes – the fact that its name, Dar Nour, echoed our own Dar Noury was a pleasant coincidence. Perched on top of the Kasbah section of the medina, we had views of the ocean and the medina around us, and the French owner Phillipe, was full of tips on his adopted city.

After a lunch of grilled shrimp and fish soup close to the water –we’d pledged to only eat seafood for the duration of our trip – we managed to find a fabric fondouk that had been recommended to us. A traditional fondouk was a sort of combination showroom and hotel for traveling merchants. Caravans of camels from across the country would enter through one large door and the camels and merchandise would be housed on the ground floor while upstairs small rooms gave merchants a place to sleep. At night, the large door would be locked to thwart thieves, both outside and inside the fondouk. Since merchants no longer travel in camel trains, the fondouks have adapted, but most remain focused on a single enterprise. In this fondouk, the downstairs has become a sprawling market of shops selling cheap plastic wares imported from around the world, but the small rooms upstairs have all been outfitted with looms, and dozens of textile workers produce a beautiful array of fabrics in wool, cotton, linen and a local favorite, vegetable silk, made from cactus plants. The fact that it’s all made on the premises means, of course, that the prices are about half what they’d be in stores elsewhere in the city or in Marrakech.


After we watched the sun set from the terrace of Dar Nour, we grabbed a taxi to take us to La Montagne, for a drink at the Villa Josephine. With its wood paneled walls and floral print sofas, the former estate turned hotel felt very South Hampton, and the prices matched. But the place was serene, and situated on lovely grounds with views of the water, and the bartenders knew exactly what they were doing. Our taxi driver pointed out that the King’s local palace was just around the corner, and drove us to another seafood restaurant for dinner. The first three recommendations we called were closed for Ramadan, something we haven’t run into in Marrakech. It seems that Tangier does not have the tourist traffic that keeps all the restaurants in Marrakech going full steam, and it was interesting to see how much more of an impact the holiday has on Tangier.