The Overseas Adventures of Steven and Annie Berger August 13th through December 22nd, 2018: 11/27 & 28: From Ronda to Tangier, Morocco

How glorious it was to return again on our last morning in Ronda to the town's Socorro Square, especially with the glorious sun and bright blue skies that had been so rarely seen of late.

The most important building on the square was the Iglesia del Nuestra Senora del Socorro but it'd been closed every other time we'd walked through the square so we were happy it was finally open on our last day. Not often have we seen many pink-domed churches in our travels.

Seeing this bull-decorated doorknocker reminded us that Ronda was a town crazy about its bullfighters and fiercely proud of the country's oldest Bullring that we'd enjoyed touring a couple of days previously.

We had some hours to kill so found a bench in the very attractive Alameda de Tajo Park to while away the time before catching a bus to Algeciras, the southernmost spot in Spain and our jumping off spot for both Tangier, Morocco, and Gibraltar.

We finally had to tear ourselves away, but not before strolling along the town's pretty pedestrian streets that had been built centuries ago to be wide enough for just people and donkeys!

We'd had such a fun time exploring the fascinating White Hill town of Ronda and its gorgeous gorge, its secret mine and traipsing around narrow paths in the valley, we almost hated to leave but we knew more adventures awaited us in the next couple of days from our base in Algeciras, one of the largest port cities in Europe.

The following day, November 28th, we took just an hour-long ferry for a day trip to Tangier, Morocco, once labelled as the 'Tijuana of Africa.' We'd only planned a day there as we'd hoped to return to Morocco for a couple of weeks this coming summer. Those plans have changed pretty drastically, however, so a return visit is now on the back burner. We'd read a lot about the pros and cons of taking one-day package tour versus a DIY tour and finally opted for the latter, as we prefer to go at our own pace and not doing any forced shopping.

I'd read that writers and musicians have always loved Tangier and artists such as Delacroix and Matisse had been enticed by its evocative light. The Beat generation, led by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, looked for the city's otherworldly feel. I didn't know beforehand that Tangier had been governed by nine different nations and its tax-free zone created a booming free-for-all atmosphere which attracted playboy millionaires, con artists and expat romantics, according to travel writer Rick Steves.

As Tangier was ruled by Spain in the 19th century and France in the 20th, it would make sense that signs would be in three languages, none of which were English; the third was Arabic, the language of Morocco.

Our first sight of the African continent in a couple of years was pretty cloudy thanks to the ferry's dirty windows!

The ferry from the Spanish port of Tarifa took us to Tangier's city center port called the Medina Port where the old town or Medina was located. Our first impressions of the city were very positive once we'd managed to escape the large number of men at the dock who almost harassed us to hire them for the day.

We trudged up the steep alleys of the Lower Medina to the Tangier American Legation Museum, billed as having the only historic US landmark abroad. Morocco was one of the first five countries to recognize the newly-formed United States as an independent country in 1777. The original building was given to the US by Morocco's sultan which made it the fledgling government's first foreign acquisition.

The Legation was the US embassy or consulate in Morocco from 1821-1961 when it became an Arabic language school for US diplomats, and then a Peace Corps training center. Since the American Bicentennial in 1976, the building has become a museum, research library and cultural and conference center.

The proclamation by Sultan Sidi Mohammed formally included the Americans among Morocco's trading partners and recognized American independence.

The mansion had lots of paintings, a letter with the news of Lincoln's assassination as well as a a collection of model soldiers playing out two battle scenes from Moroccan history that belonged to American industrialist Malcolm Forbes who had a home in Tangier.

There was also an interesting collection of old maps of Tangier and Morocco.

Walking along the pretty grimy alleys we came across what we were told was a synagogue so we stopped in for a few minutes after being hoodwinked and believing the caretaker. It wasn't until we paid the admittedly low entrance fee that we realized it was a former theater with lots of colorful posters. Guess even world travelers like us are still gullible at times!

Someone then kindly led us to the nearby Nahon Synagogue which was built by a wealthy banker to honor the memory of his father in 1878. During that period, Tangier had very close to 8,000 Jews and there were may other synagogues.

This custodian couldn't have been more welcoming and hospitable when he showed us around, including when he pointed out the Torah scrolls written on parchment and covered in velvet or brocade.

The decorative walls and matching ceiling were exquisite with their lacy, pale cream details.

Overlooking the prayer space upstairs were many embroidered, turn of the century marriage contracts in Hebrew. What a labor of love they were.

Weddings, bar mitzvahs and circumcisions were celebrated at Nahon. The French-speaking guide cum caretaker said only 300 Jews still remained in Tangier compared with over 3,000 in Casablanca

I learned that one indication of how rich the congregation was was because of the large number of lamps donated in memory of deceased members.

Who would ever have thought that behind such an unassuming entrance there would be such beauty? Certainly not I.

These sure weren't the charming alleys we'd gotten so used to seeing all over Spain.

We were following the signs to the Catholic Church but, in the maze of winding lanes, got 'lost' in the local market or souk where we wandered past hanging slabs of meat, piles of olives and just soaked in the atmosphere of this other world.

Women vendors wearing straw hats decorated with ribbons and colorful striped skirts were Berbers who rode donkeys to the city from the nearby Rif Mountains.

I read that the chickens were plucked and hung to indicate they had been slaughtered according to halal or Islamic guidelines which meant a sharp knife in the name of Allah, with the head toward Mecca, and then drained of their blood.

We eventually came to a large white market of fish sellers with the day's aromatic catch from both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic!

Leaving the grand arch, the souk emptied out into The Grand Socco, a big bustling square, transportation hub, market and the dividing line between the old town and the new town. In front of the arch we spotted day laborers looking for work. Each one had a symbol of the type of work he specialized in: a bucket of paintbrushes for a painter, a coil of wiring for an electrician, etc. If you click to enlarge the photo, you'll notice the gardening equipment and sack on the lower right.

You could hardly walk a few feet in the new town without coming across the distinctive turquoise taxis!

Just off the Grand Socco were the Mendoubia Gardens, a favorite place for locals to hang out apparently. Steven and I were expecting a park or gardens with lots of green space, an oasis in the busy city. What we saw was the business courthouse built to house the representative of the Moroccan king, back in the early 20th century when Tangier was ruled as a protectorate of various European powers and needed an ambassador to keep an eye out for local interests, according to Steves.

Just inside the gateway was the trunk of a gigantic banyan tree which, according to local legend, dated from the 12th century.

It was impressive noticing how extra supportive roots had actually grown from the branches down to the ground.

Behind the tree this smaller building, once the headquarters of the German delegation in Tangier, had become the marriage (and divorce!) courthouse.

As we circled around the square, we came to the entrance to St. Andrew's Anglican Church. The Anglican Church, as many of you may already know, is the official church in England, the country where my mother grew up before she emigrated to Canada after marrying my father following the end of WWII. My four brothers and I were all raised Catholics but she remained a lifelong Anglican. I thought it interesting that St. Andrew's was part of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe as that British protectorate would be our stop on our day trip the next day.

The square was noisy with the constant din of traffic so the church gardens were a welcome refuge and escape. The land on which the church was located was a gift from the sultan to the British community in 1881, during Queen Victoria's era.

Before reaching the church, we viewed the graves and memorials to those who lost their lives in military missions during the Second World War.

The guide told us the church's chaplains were normally retired Anglican priests who were given a free apartment to live in. Although the church was entirely Christian, it was designed in the style of a Muslim mosque with The Lord's Prayer ringing the arch in Arabic, just like Koranic verses would in a mosque.

Maybe other Christians might have been affronted with its overt Muslim style but it seemed to complement the church and paid homage to the Arab city where it was located in my opinion.

Set up right across the street was a Berber clothing market which seemed to specialize in multi-hued leather slippers and jackets.

Rick Steves somehow made Boulevard Pasteur, the axis of cosmopolitan Tangier, sound fantastically exciting and one we shouldn't miss walking down with its 'legendary cafes' such as the Gran Cafe de Paris which has been around since 1920.

Moroccans, he wrote, call this the 'tennis' street because people's heads swivel back and forth watching the parade of people as they eat at the sidewalk cafes. However, Steven and I found it less than appealing with aggressive men, lots of grime and trash and definitely not a place we'd have felt comfortable for any length of time.

That was also true at the Place de Faro terrace at the end of the street where it was made very clear foreigners weren't welcome. It was a shame as the views back to Spain were enchanting.

We hurried back to The Grand Socco square in the heart of Tangier which, until a few years ago, was described as a pedestrian nightmare and a a perpetual traffic jam. It didn't appear to have changed much, though, when we were there as one still had to exercise great caution when crossing the street!

The tall, white building at the top of the square was the historic Cinema Rif named after the nearby mountains.

Behind the green rooftops were more markets.

We left the square for the last time through another intriguing arch and into yet another colorful souk with more lanes to lose ourselves in!

Many of the souk's residents weren't able to afford private oven, phones or running water, so small hole-in-the-wall bakeries like this one served the community as locals could drop off their ready-to-cook dough as well as other products to cook.

Narrow, very colorful lanes like these were the norm in much of the souk. It's important to state that at no time did we feel at all unsafe walking by ourselves, and as obvious foreigners, in this section of Tangier. Strangely enough, we felt far more comfortable here where people had almost nothing compared to the newer section which we found distinctly uncomfortable.

It was like being in another world for us after the squeaky clean cities and towns of Spain. The sights and sounds were far more in our face here but not in an altogether unpleasant way. It was just a matter of what it was and to accept it for that, warts and all.

Nina: If you read this one day, know that we were thinking of you, sweetheart, when we saw your name written on this colorful wall.

Up ahead was a large group of tourists, probably here for the day like us but from one of the many cruise ships that lay anchor in Tangier. It was only when we got closer that we realized there was a snake charmer entertaining the group! Of course, anyone who was willing to have a snake draped around his or her neck had to pay for the dubious honor!

At the top of the hill was the Kasbah, an enclosed protected residential area loosely translated as a 'fortress' and found in hundreds of Moroccan towns. Originally this was a place where a king or other leader could protect his tribe, according to Steves.

As we'd gone a whole day with only seeing one museum - certainly a record for us! - we were curious to look around the Kasbah Museum.

Most of the exhibits surrounded the attractive open-air courtyard.

Heh - it's been a long while since I've been able to add to my collection of unusual bathroom signs - I think I would have expected something less modern and more Arab in style!

We saw an assortment of tools and objects used by early hunters, that, to my untrained eye, looked remarkably similar to those we've seen in so many other museums around the world!

The ancient mosaics, on the other hand, appealed to me hugely. They depicted the Navigation of Venus and were created in the 1st century AD.

The big 12th century wall-size map by a Tangier cartographer showed, in Arabic, the Moorish view of the world with Africa on the top!

The 19th century ceramic jars came from Fes, a city in Morocco we thought we'd see this year but other places have bumped it off the list for now.

The painted fresco of a necropolis came from the Roman era, about the 1st century.

The museum had a preponderance of funerary items for some reason, these included!

I was so glad I thought to look up in this room as the ceiling was perhaps the finest thing we saw in the museum.

The Kasbah's garden was an exceedingly pleasant place to wander in for a while.

Back in the museum, we saw examples of the Portuguese occupation of the region with this 16th century funeral stelae. I guess the gloomy or possibly fierce-looking face was intended to ward off evil spirits!

Another wood ceiling that was alone worth the price of admission to the museum!

There were also ho hum exhibits dedicated to jewelry worn by Muslim women.

Before leaving the Kasbah, we walked through the Sea Gate which led to a natural terrace with marvelous views over the port, the Mediterranean, and Spain.

Somewhere in the distance was Gibraltar, we overhead a guide say. We'd have to wait until the next day before discovering the Rock!

At the lower gate to the Kasbah was a little alcove where there was a particularly fine fountain. The top part was carved cedar; below that was carved plaster; on the bottom was hand-laid tiles.

After looking at these photos and remembering our visit, one thing I realize now I did really like about Tangier were its many inviting gates and arches.

I'd forgotten the number of keyhole arches and doorways we saw; how striking they were.

In many of the doorways we saw tailors hard at work. The great French designer, Yves Saint-Laurent, came here in the mid 1970s to learn how to make caftans.

Our time in Tangier went by quickly before we had to return to the port to get the ferry back to Tarifa and the bus onto Algeciras. We were both glad we'd made the day trip but it was the only place in this long trip that disappointed us or didn't live up to our expectations or the hype. It certainly made me pause and wonder about a future trip to Morocco although it wouldn't be fair to judge an entire country by our experience in this one city.