Tangier

When I got up to the Explorer's Lounge, we were in the Strait, directly north of Tangier, according to the ship tracker app. We must have turned south soon afterwards, because here we are, sliding into the pier in the dark. Lots of lights to our left and right. We'll tie up in the dark again.

We're docking at a pier that puts us parallel to the shore. I went out on deck to make sure they were doing it right, as I always do. Lights curved around us to define the shoreline. A couple of well-lit ships in the harbor. And there, faintly, in the distance, about seventeen miles away, the lights of Spain.

As it get lighter – while we're eating breakfast – and we see that we're in the half-scoop out of northern Morocco that is the Bay of Tangier. We're docked at another brand new port – it seems that Morocco will be one of the hosts of the 2030 World Cup* and the King wants Morocco to be ready. Evidence of construction and upgrades were seen in the modern section of the city. The port is much smaller than Casablanca's – just about four container cranes, and not much else.

The bay is ringed by hills, but unlike Marseilles, there seems to be little or no flat land by the shore. On the eastern half of the bay, the hills seem steeper, and there are few buildings; before dawn, there was hardly any light from that side. The city is on the western half of the bay, rising up fairly sharply from the water. It starts at the bottom of the bay – masses of apartment buildings stretching east and around north, to the downtown section at about 8:00. Past that, to the west end of the bay which rises a little above the rest, is the old city – which, if you look at just it, looks a lot like Tunis. But above it, at the crest of the hill (and we would presume, down the other side) the large apartment buildings begin again. But the old town – flanked on the water side by the ruins of ancient fortifications – is where we'll spend the morning.

Before we go, though, and before I forget it again, I have promised to write about differences between our Viking river cruise and this Viking ocean cruise. It's easy to take the food for granted, as good as it is, but there are some major differences.

On the River Cruise, lunch and dinner were a menu affair: You sat at your table, a waiter gave you a menu, and you ordered a starter, a main dish, and a dessert (or, if you were Abbey, often two desserts). There were two sides to the menu. On the left side were choices which changed every day. On the right side, were more familiar choices, which never changed. You could order anything off of either menu, but you had a starter, a main course, and a dessert.

On this ocean cruise (and I assume on all of them), you still have that option; there's a dining room, waiters, and the menu looks very familiar. But you have a second choice as well – the buffet at the World Cafe, which takes up the back 1/3 of the 7th deck. This Cafe is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (I just looked it up: 6:30 – 10:00; 11:30-2:30, and 6:00-9:00). There is a huge variety of dishes available here, along with sides, garnishes, condiments, and lots more. Most of the offerings change each day, but there are a lot of dishes – especially breakfast items – which are always available. There's always pizza for lunch; always sticky buns for breakfast, and always eight kinds of ice cream and sorbet for lunch and dinner.

I've mentioned the big touch-screen digital displays around the ship. One provides the menu for the Restaurant and the World Cafe. We spent some time early on comparing them, and decided that most of the good stuff available in the Restaurant at any given meal is also available at the buffet in the World Cafe. So we've been eating there regularly, since it take a lot less time (unless you want to linger), there's a lot bigger selection, and (especially recently) you can eat outside.

There are also much smaller venues around the ship which have much more limited offerings – mostly snacks – but really good ones. And the two specialty restaurants, as I have written about elsewhere.

It's important to note that the food has been really, really good. That first night was an anomaly. Since then, it's been superb.

[ABBEY: I learned a few words- salaam alaikum = a greeting, shukran = thank you, and ma salaam= good-bye. Very useful adding a “no” (universal) to the latter two to get rid of pesky beggars, especially to the small children who put on a woebegone look and wave a packet of Kleenex in your face! Yallah= let's go.]

On the bus – Yallah indeed.

Our ship, and the hills
east of town.

The port pier where we're tied up is very close to the cornice, which is right at the foot of both the old city – the medina – and the downtown. We passed the medina on the bus and drove up into the downtown. It's a lot less chaotic than the Casablanca downtown, but somehow Tangier seems to be a much more vibrant town than Casablanca. Casablanca's downtown is mobbed, but the rest of the city seems to be waiting for the tourists, and a little shabby. Tangier is at work, and it mostly looks good. Downtown is actually really pretty – much of it was rebuilt in the 1970s, which is usually a bad sign but here, it works. Buildings are mostly 8-10 stories, shops on the ground floor and apartments above. There are a variety of architectural styles, but most read to me as a cool, laid-back Mediterranean, curvy and elegant, and mostly (not entirely) white. It looked really nice with the morning sun on it.

We got to the top of the medina (which is the... what? Casbah! Right!), and got out for a long walk down to the water, exploring the casbah, the medina and the souk toward the bottom. We started by taking a look at the (outside of the) oldest mosque in Tangier, and the madrassa school, and then onward.

The Tangier casbah is defined as the mosque, the Sultan's Palace and the Citadel, built up into the cliff facing the Strait; we saw the ruins of the bottom section as we passed in the bus. The Sultan's Palace has been turned into a museum.

Both the casbah and the medina are really neighborhoods, with two and three story houses built in a real hodge-podge up the hill; streets stop and start, come and go, appear and disappear. It would be simple to get lost almost immediately, if you didn't know to just go downhill until you got to the harbor. This makes it a real visual treat to walk through the medina – houses are generally in good shape, and are often ornamented in restrained but distinctive ways, often using Arabic designs. There were enough plantings to add a softer and richer feel to the environment. Bougainvillea were everywhere, and in bloom. We were constantly turning corners, often disappearing under an arch and walking down a shadowed or sunlit alley which zigged and zagged, with highly ornamented and brightly colored doors on street level, and decorated windows above. Most buildings were white.

One of many
Actual Cats

We saw enough Actual Cats that I stopped taking pictures of them. Except the Ice Cream Cat. It seems that people leave food out for them, so there are a lot.

The Museum which used to be a Sultan's Palace is a small, interesting museum which kind of suffered from poor group tour planning. There are over 500 passengers who are doing the same included tour as we are – exploring the narrow streets of the medina and the even narrower passageways of the souk. Much of the souk was a single-file affair. So groups of 40+ tend to get stretched out and disorganized pretty quickly. And when three or four groups that size converge on a museum that could maybe handle one group – and when there's the first restroom stop of the day in the museum – it's a nightmare. This problem re-occurred throughout the day, as two or three groups met up in the narrow streets and alleys of the medina and the souk. 'Nuff said. We had a second guide, who was responsible for following behind us and making sure no one “got loose,” as our guide said, and he did a pretty good job, but still. [Abbey: I was really annoyed that our group had 46 people in it, so much wasted time as our guide ran back and forth trying to corral us, and count us all. A lot of the group felt the same way. Back on board, I went to guest services and suggested strongly that Viking not do that again. The clerk I was talking to said Viking had a policy of no more than 25 in a group. What happened? Too many people traveling in groups wanted to keep their group together, and many wanted to switch their afternoon tours to the morning. Argh! It was one of the more interesting tours, too.]

Anyway, the Sultan's palace, at least the part that the museum occupied, was a big central courtyard with six or eight rooms off of it. Most of the rooms were where his harem lived, and one was for him. The displays were actually pretty good – artifacts from Moroccan archaeological digs, artfully mounted from 5,000 years ago up to the present. [And all labels in Arabic and French.] And then there were some rooms where I wasn't sure what was being displayed; one had a mirror that allowed you to see the ornate ceiling (and yourself, since you had to lean over the mirror to see the ceiling art).

We made it out of the museum, past the long line at the restroom, and (I've forgotten the sequence) made our way to the lookout, through an archway in the Citadel and onto a kind patio out over the cliff. There was the Strait laid out in front of us, all the way from left to right, but it was a hazy day, and we could only see the outline of the Spanish mountains; Gibraltar wasn't visible, regardless of what our guide said. Must be breathtaking on a clear day. What was visible was the port and our ship to the right, and Atlantic rollers crashing on the shore to our left.

The Atlantic Ocean
from the Citadel

We went into two larger stores, and listened to presentations by the proprietors – a carpet store, with Moroccan and Berber rugs, which were very nice, and a 'pharmacy,' which sells organic essential oils and lotions and salves, which we all tried, except for those who had to leave because they were allergic to perfumes. One of the lotion combinations would reverse the aging process, or would appear to, by improving your skin. Abbey was really take with one of the rugs, but it was very expensive, and neither of us was tempted by the oils.

[Actually, I was taken with the argan/roses one, but the scent faded after awhile, and besides was more than I was willing to pay. I did learn that the squeezings of the fruit of the Christmas pear is the best for skin, and we have them growing at the Cape. Also, there are 2 kinds of almonds, one has white flowers, and are edible, the other, with pink flowers, has bitter almonds.]

More wandering around in the medina, which was a pretty nice experience, and then all of a sudden we were in the souk – marketplace – where everything changed. Whereas the medina was mostly outside (but often so narrow there were only glimpses of sky) the souk was, like in Tunis, mostly (but not entirely) inside. But unlike Tunis, this souk didn't seem to have medieval roots; the construction – from inside, at least – was featureless and, if not modern per se, a whole lot newer than Tunis'.

And for the most part, the passageways were narrow, especially in the food sections. Stalls were jammed right up next to each other, one after another, each the size of a king sized bed, or, in many cases, a queen sized bed. Stalls sold handcrafted goods – leather, copper or brass work with lacquer inlay, ornamented pottery, fabrics, clothes and food – lots and lots of food. Stalls with huge containers of fruits and nuts and dates; butchers with huge animal limbs hanging in the front, the butchers cutting off pieces to order; fruits and vegetables, naan bread (made on the spot) and pastries. I found it odd that there were maybe ten stalls with fruits and nuts; ten stalls with raw meat of all kinds, many large stalls with fruits and vegetables, and so forth. Each stall in each category was the same as the next, often right next to each other – how do you choose where to shop, and how does anyone make a living? The goods represent a huge investment, and with the meat and fruits and vegetables, they are not saleable after a relatively short time. There must be a way to learn more about this, because the souk in Tangier was just fascinating. [Another interesting thing about these stalls, tiny and squeezed together, the families live above them. I saw a salesperson looking up, saw a ladder leading beyond ceiling level, and heard a child's voice. Many simply spread their wares out on the ground. The guide pointed out the straw hats which were worn by Berbers, who were selling cheese. One old woman had her hat down to hide her face. I tried to get a picture of her hat and the cheeses while her head was down, but she looked up and caught me. Boy did I get scolded! Other sales people were friendly and called out hello. I responded with salaam aliakum, which got quite a cheerful response. ]

The souk seemed endless, and we loved wandering through it. And suddenly, after a very long and engaging time in the souk, we were out, in the medina again, just above the plaza on the water. We had forty minutes of free time, which meant shopping in the wide variety of shops close by. No place to sit. But it turns out that we could go back to the bus, which was five minutes away, and what seemed like about half of us chose that option. I am not a shopper.

Back to the ship, leisurely lunch in the sun, out on the deck, with Tangier laid out all around us. We could see where we had started, at the mosque, and then the medina running downhill, and the citadel off to the right, at the edge of town. The souk was not obvious from a distance, but we knew it was right there, under the white buildings we could see, toward the bottom of the medina. We had traversed most of the old town. The way was uneven, and entirely paved in stone of many types; few stairs and many slopes. I was gratified to see that my ankles and knees had not kept me from enjoying the long walk.

We were accompanied for most of our walk by vendors trying to sell us – trinkets mostly, but some higher-quality leather

goods; cute little camels, jewelry, t-shirts, and, surprisingly, geodes. And the young girls, down on the plaza, as Abbey mentioned, trying to look as downtrodden as possible, and don't say anything, with just pocket sized packages of Kleenex to sell. From what I've read online, these girls are often from truly poverty-stricken families, but the attempt at emotional manipulation is really off-putting. I've often thought of sitting an indigent person down and asking them to tell me their story. A story for some financial assistance – that's a fair trade. Kleenex is somehow bizarre and creepy.

Afternoon was nap (Abbey) and sit on the balcony and look at the harbor and city (me). There really is no commercial activity in the harbor – no cargo ships. There are three standard cranes and one smaller one. There are brand new apartment buildings on the water, inside the port, and a whole new marina which is still empty. There is a large ferry that was here this morning and left this afternoon, and two hydrofoil ferries, a little smaller but still really big, which have been coming and going all day, I assume across the Strait. Tangier is supposed to be a major port on the Mediterranean – where does that happen?

My curiosity got the better of me, and I looked it up. Aha - apparently, the actual port of Tangier is not here in the Bay, but, according to Google AI:

The port of Tangier Ville is on the western edge of the harbor and it's situated on a bay between Cap Spartel and Cap Malabata, very close to Tangier's center [this is the one I'm looking at]. On the other hand, the port of Tangier Med is almost an hour and 50 km northeast of Tangier. It is located in Oued Rmel, very close to the Spanish city of Ceuta.

Oh, yeah. There it is on Google Maps – Oued Rmel, a huge port well to the east of Tangier, where Morocco comes closest to Spain. Lots of cranes. That's why it's so peaceful in the Bay of Tangier.

By the way, you probably noticed the reference to “the Spanish city of Ceuta.” Spain owns a little peninsula attached to the northeastern most part of Morocco, on the south side of the Strait, for some reason. I've read about this, I think in Paul Theroux's book “The Pillars of Hercules,” in which he travels completely around the Mediterranean and writes about it. The land border between that little part of Spain and Morocco has become a flashpoint of the European immigration issue, because if you can make it from Morocco soil to Ceuta, you have some sort of immunity (I've forgotten the details) and cannot be deported back to Moroccan soil. Easier, maybe, than joining too many people in a rickety boat and sailing for Spain.

By the way #2: “The Pillars of Hercules” is what the Greeks called the Strait, since Hercules, in Greek mythology, is credited with splitting the land apart (for some reason) and creating an entrance to the Atlantic. But the Pillars also represented the limits of Greek world, so I guess they never took advantage of the passage.

Anyway – a lovely dinner out on the deck, with only two other couples out with us. Apparently everyone else was at the Pool Grill, where they were grilling lobsters, and eating at the tables around the pool. Cool. But we had grilled lobster at the buffet too, and it was great. As was the Beef Wellington, which they didn't have at the pool. We watched the dusk deepen, and linger behind the minaret at the top of the hill. Lights all around the bay, a very faint hum of activity, but mostly silent. A nice ending to a beautiful day.

* - The other two are Spain and Portugal. When I heard this, I immediately imagined a floating soccer field in the Strait, equidistant from each country.

The souk