The GCW Tour, Spain & Morocco: Waiting for the Train

Well, we've made it to Tangier, hooked up with our guide, and spent the day touring the city and the surrounding area. A few initial reactions...

Ramadan really does shut the country down. Places that, according to our guide, will be completely overrun in three weeks were ghost towns today. Depending what you're after as a tourist, this could be a good or a bad thing.

The guide service provided by Aziz Benami was top notch. Although we only met Aziz briefly on the tour and were managed by another guide, both were great. Aziz was very helpful via email in advance of the trip, secured our tickets for sleepers on the night train to Marrakech, and the guide was knowledgeable, informative and accommodating. Even better, the driver's been watching our bags all day and is coming back at 8:45 to take us to the train station -- which is pretty great. I'm very glad we opted not to try to navigate Tangier ourselves.

That said, there was a stop at a "bazaar," and perhaps stupidly I bought a rug. I've been in the market for rugs anyway, and it's a very nice rug, but for someone not brought up in the haggling approach to purchasing, it's hard not to think you may have been had. But the good news is, cancer changes your relationship to money so I don't much care. 

The niece's number one goal for our trip got completed in our first hour in Tangier. Yay! More on that in the next post.

So much for initial reactions. We now have an an hour and forty-five minutes to kill before our ride to the train comes, and forty-five minutes before the sun officially sets, prayers are completed and the city explodes with people. 

We're still deciding between wandering the streets or camping out in this cafe and using their Wi-Fi.

Note the photo with the painter. The forthcoming James Bond film Spectre was being shot here and set designers painted this stretch of the village to look old and rundown. Now that filming is done, the people who own the building are putting it back the way it was.

Clearly, Ramadan does not mean food is unavailable. Observers just don't eat it before sundown. 

That patio the niece is standing on belongs to the only US landmark that exists outside the United States.