The four hour bus journey went rather quickly, passing through plantations of Olive trees and the occasional Poppy. We had one stop mid way where you can have a BBQ lunch – once again you had to go and buy your raw meat and then queue to have it cooked on the grill – I must say it did smell delicious and left me wishing I had opted for lunch instead of a quick granola snack bar.

Eventually the flat plantations turned into hillsides meaning we had finally reached the Rif mountains and our destination, Chefchaouen (or the City of Chaouen), which was a quaint village nestled between two mountain peaks.

After a slight mis direction our taxi finally dropped us off at our raid which was a picture of prettiness. As soon as you entered the doors you wanted to explore or just collapse by the pool. It captured the Moroccan/Spanish influence so beautifully that the 12 of us descended on the hotel so excitedly that I am sure we caused quite a stir. Unbeknown to us the party that was having lunch included none other than the Prince of the United Arab Emirates….guess a Hola greeting might not have been the most appropriate 🙂

The City of Chaouen was in complete contrast to the previous cities we had visited. Being further north the influence was more Spanish with most people speaking a dialect of Arabic and Spanish. Being more serene it allowed for quite exploration. The prices seemed to have been about a quarter of the price of goods in Fes and all the shop owners were happy to have you walk around without jumping to your side as soon as you picked something up to examine.

My time in Chefchouen was filled with taking many many photos of the picturesque streets of different blue hues, watching children play in the streets, mistakenly stumbling into an unsuspecting homeowners house thinking it was a pottery shop, sampling snails on the street and strangely for such a small Medina getting lost!

The evenings stayed just as relaxing with the occasional Shisha thrown in to add to the atmosphere.

I hope you all like the pictures, I think they tell more about the town than I can put into words 🙂