A Whole New World!

Or at least a whole new CONTINENT!

On Saturday, we headed to Tarifa to take the ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar into Tangier, Morocco on the continent of Africa.

When we arrived in Tangier, we met our tour guide and boarded a bus for a very short ride to the Medina, or "old town".  We were the last three on the bus, and there were no more seats, so Tim had to ride up front with the driver.  YAY!

We walked VERY quickly through the market, although we could have stayed there for hours and hours.  We wanted to stop and sample everything we saw, but were scared we'd get separated from the group.

We loved the loom shop.  Tim is standing with our "Obama look-alike" tour guide.  He wore a suit for the tour, but put this on in the shop just for fun.  He was an excellent guide, and could speak seven languages!

Tim wanted me to take a picture of this "delivery truck" to show Tony.  There just wasn't room on the Medina streets for normal size vehicles!

Olivia was really excited about Tangier, because she was seeing it for the first time too.  And I was excited to take lots of pictures of her!

 We visited the royal palace.

 Tangier was shabby, and absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

We ate lunch in a beautiful, delicious Moroccan restaurant, serenaded by Moroccan music.

 

  

We were not charmed by the snake charmer.  Even Mama wouldn't have been scared of this snake.  We're pretty sure it was drugged!  Our least favorite thing about Tangier was the constant badgering from the residents to buy something or give them money for something.  After we watched the man with the snake, he passed around a bucket for our money.  Olivia and I just said, "NO!" "NO!" "NO!" every time someone asked us for money.  What did Tim do?  He struck up a conversation!  Did it matter that they didn't speak the same language?  "NO!"  On the ferry back to Spain, he started talking to a man who spoke almost NO English, and kept asking him questions like "Do you like country music?"  Of course the man had NO idea what Tim was asking, so Tim kept asking Olivia to translate.  To help the man understand what she was talking about, she ended up singing a few lines of "Jesus Take the Wheel".  I laughed until I cried.

We ended the day with a very "tourist-y" camel ride, then boarded the ferry to return to Spain.

Another amazing day.  Goodbye Morocco.