Wandering in and above Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen looks like a Pinterest-gasm of peeling paint and antique doors exploded over the physical walls of a fifteenth century city. I spent three blissful days there with friends over the long weekend for Muharram.

A morning view of one of the many mosques in the old medina

My best advice for you is to wander through the old medina (Arabic for city). Leave your watch and your phone in the room. Don't even bring a map. All roads in the city lead back to the main square and the Kasabah. If you are climbing up many flights of stairs, you are likely heading out of town. If you are descending stairs, you are eventually going to end up back at the Kasabah. If you truly are lost, ask a local. Many speak four or five languages (French, Arabic, Spanish, and English, to name a few).

The best time to explore (in my opinion any new city) is in the early morning. Wake up before the other tourists and explore. You experience the immense pleasure of watching a city wake, of smelling the first batch of bread as it bakes in the communal oven, and of relishing in the cool and quiet of a soon-to-be-bustling tourist hub.

Hiking
Do you like to hike? Do you like it when you quads scream from exertion after four continuous hours of steep incline? If you answered yes to these questions, then you should recreate our hike up the mountain of Jebel el-Kelaa. We used this blog post by two intrepid hikers as our guide up the mountain. The views are incredible all the way up with panoramic vistas of the pale blue city visible from the early switchbacks and a sprawling expanse of the semi-desert valleys visible from the summit.

At the summit Jebel el-Kelaa

This hike is not for the faint of heart. The altitude makes the climb particularly strenuous. You will be walking/sweating/crawling up and down an entire mountain. 12 miles. 8 hours of continuous movement. There is no clear path. You'll be on the road for the first half of your journey, but at the small, red water fountain you will veer off the road onto a goat trail that will lead you through fields of marijuana and past the homes of those self-same marijuana farmers. They will offer you tea and will hand you their goats to cuddle. You will love them.

My new best friend, Florido the Goat

Eating

• Restaurant Morisco (breakfast/lunch/dinner): We ate here three times. I recommend the mango juice, the Nutella crepes, and the harira (Moroccan soup with chickpeas).
• On a budget? The restaurants in the main square are the most expensive you'll find in the old medina. At the same time, "expensiveness" is relative. The average meal will run you less than 50 dirhams ($5). But if you want cheaper eats, check out the local food stands on all the side streets or find local restaurants tucked off the main square. 
• Really on a budget? I'm a huge advocate of the DIY dinner. My friend, Olivia, and I made a delicious meal of goat cheese, olives, dates, and local pastry. The whole meal cost 15 dirhams per person total ($1.50).

Lodging

• We stayed at Pension Soukia, which is your basic hostel. I would recommend it for any traveler on a budget. The staff is friendly and helpful and you cannot beat the central location and cheap price.

Exploring Chefchaouen in the heat? Check out the swimming pool at Hotel Atlas. It offers beautiful views of the city below and a frigid dip in a pool really beats the afternoon heat. (Note for the wise, it has quite the unseemly reputation because it serves alcohol. If you take a taxi there, your driver will judge you and your life choices.)

Solo Travel to Marrakech for Eid

For the Eid holiday weekend I travelled alone from Ifrane to Marrakech via a one-hour car ride followed by a seven-hour train ride. The train taught me about the limits of my patience and the tolerance of my stomach against motion sickness, as I persisted in reading my book despite my better judgement (For future-me, when you're re-reading blog posts instead of writing new ones, it's about an hour). It also taught me more about the friendliness of Moroccans stuck with me in the same train compartment. I made a number of new friends who live both in Morocco and France.

The roof of my hosts' home

Upon arriving in Marrakech I promptly went to the home of the Moroccan family with which I would spend the next three days. Their home, built in the style of a Moroccan riad, circled a common interior courtyard. Beautiful stained glass windows crowned the interior courtyard. Detailed plaster carvings, one of my favorite features of Moroccan architecture, graced the high ceilings. After a whirlwind tour, my host, Amal, took me to the local hammam for a truly Moroccan experience. I highly recommend the experience - which involves copious amounts of hot steam, black Moroccan soap, and painful exfoliating scrubs.

One of the detailed mosaic floors of the Bahia Palace

The next day, Eid, found me to the home of a neighboring family that had bought a sheep for the occasion. We spent the morning drinking tea and waiting for the neighborhood butcher to arrive. When he did, he made slow work of the poor sheep and, while I felt guilty, I emerged from the morning still an omnivore.

The sheep didn't make it.

The day after Eid, when the shops had reopened, I wandered the old medina, starting from the luscious gardens and the breathtaking mosaics of the Bahia Palace, to a delicious lunch at La Famille, to the stunning panorama of the Maison de la Photographie.

The view from La Maison de la Photographie

 I did all of my long-distance travel and old medina explorations alone. *Gasp* Women can travel alone? You ask. Why yes, we do. If you, like me, are a woman who loves to travel, I have an (in-progress list of travel tips):

1. Make use of that network! Let people know where you're traveling, both inside and outside the country in which you are traveling. The more the merrier! 
2. Have a functional phone. In addition throw in the number of at least one person you know and trust in that city. This could be the manager of your hotel or your friend's cousin's mom. But if you get lost and need a friend to bail you out, that number will come in handy.
3. Perfect your RBF. Your Resting Bitch Face, that is. While traveling (alone or with others), shopkeepers will bother you. If you don't want to add a myriad of other local men to that list of persistent shopkeepers, you will perfect the stony stare of indifference. As an American, not smiling sometime seems sacrilegious. However, in a different cultural context (i.e. Morocco) a smiling woman sends a different (often not desired) message. (Note for the wise: Only a woman can christen her own visage with the RBF moniker. I will personally disown the person who tells me that I have one who is neither a woman nor my best friend.)

The view during lunch at La Famille

Where to next? While it may seem ridiculous to plan future travels abroad while having just arrived (3 weeks) in Morocco, I cannot help it. I am a compulsive list maker (pro-cons, to-do's, travel bucket list, etc.). You name it, and I probably have a list of it somewhere. Where do I want to go? Well (in vague regional groups)...

Where to next?

• Middle East/North Africa:
• Tunisia
• Lebanon
• Jordan
• Syria (one day, insha'Allah)
• Africa
• South Africa
• Tanzania
• Madagascar
• South America
• Peru
• Chile
• Argentina
• Oceania
• New Zealand
• Australia
• Southeast and East Asia
• Thailand
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Japan
• Non-continental Europe
• Ireland
• Scotland
• Iceland
• Continental Europe
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Croatia
• Greece
• Finland
• Norway
• Sweden
• The Netherlands
• Luxembourg (which comes highly recommended by Margot)
• Central Asia
• Turkey
• Afghanistan (one day)
• Tajikistan