March 14, 2019 – Tangier

March 14, 2019 – Tangier, Morocco
We started our tour with an hour bus ride to see the highlights of the city. Our local guide gave us a lot of information about the history of the city. The funniest fact I learned was that the residents are called Tangierines. The city is very large. We drove down one road called California Street. The guide said it is named this because the area is so green. I guess they don’t know about our “California Gold” in the summertime.
The bus dropped us off at the top of the Casbah. There is a beautiful view of the city from here. We saw where Gore Vidal lived. As we walked down through the Casbah, the guide pointed out the house where Mick Jagger and other rockers stayed.
We went to the Hotel Continental for mint tea and to view the bay . We then set out for lunch. It was a buffet of about 20 different salads, a soup, and 4 main dishes. Everything was great and the dessert buffet was even better.
After lunch we walked through the Medina. This is where the stalls are that sell everything from veggies to meat to shoes to fake Rolexes. There is a difference sense of personal space here (as in none) so going through the market was not comfortable. We finished up at 2:30pm and were given 30 minutes to do whatever we wanted. My friends and I sat down and had tea. We wanted a beer but this being a Muslim country made that impossible.
Back on the ship after dinner they brought in a local musical group. They played and sang one song for 20 minutes. Their instruments mainly consisted of drums. They also used 2 princess phones as props. It was very loud and very weird. We were told they usually play at weddings. I never found out what the phones were for.