Tetouan

We woke up early and left Chaouen. A worker at the hostel took us down to a plaza where we could take a taxi to Tetouan. The bus ride to Chaouen was horrible and we heard the best way to go is by taxi. The only problem was we had to ride with 4 other people again. We met two British girls at our hostel and split it with them, an old muslim lady and a guy about my age. It was one of the sketchiest events I have ever participated in. Ingy, the 2 British girls and this 60 year old lady crammed in back and The driver, me and this other dude in front; no seatbelts. We were pretty high up in the mountains so the road down was steep and really windy. Our driver usually stayed in the middle of both lanes and would only take a side if he needed to pass or a car was coming. As we made our way down we saw a car in the ditched that flipped. The accident happened probably an hour before.

Crunch

maybe the driver?

Relaxed

We made it safely into Tetouan and started walking for the center of town. I read in my travel guide book that this town preferred Spanish over French. We found a building which we thought was a place to stay and a man helped us find a good Hotel. 

View from our Hotel

We got into our place and headed to the center of town. A young Moroccan around my age came up and started talking to us. He showed us a good place to eat and said he would meet us back out because he wanted to "practice English". The place was good and when we left sure enough he came walking by. He kept saying he wasn't a guide, but he was taking us to all these places and we got the feeling he was going to ask us for money. Ingy explained that we just wanted to go on our own and he said ok. He kept following us because he knew that someone else was going to try the same thing that he did. Basically he thought that we might give him some money if he walked around with us. After walking around for 10 minutes he was still following behind us a few yards. All those years of watching 24 paid off. haha. Ingy and I turned a corner and ducked into a store and just walked into the back. It was some random place and Ingy explained to the owner what was going on. He laughed and told us we could sit and wait for a bit. 

Lunch

Part of Medina with actual shops 

 The town of Tetouan was a lot bigger than Chaouen. The medina section was very worn down and desolate. In Chaouen the medina had shops lining it with actual items to buy that were hand made. Tetouan was literally a Value Village on the sidewalks. People had used shoes, remote controls, cooking supplies, etc for sale. This  went on street after street. It was a different side of Morocco that we didn't see in Chaouen.

Medina

 We walked around for a bit to the newer more modern part of town. This was a lot nicer and we walked along d in a garden that stretched a few miles to the side of a busy road.

Kitten on ledge

We didn't really want to go anywhere to eat because the guide book for the town said, "There is a surprising lack of decent restaurants in Tetouan." We took a taxi to the Mcdonald's and it was actually probably the nicest McDonald's I have ever seen. It was also the most expensive meal we had in Morocco. We didn't want to taxi back so we walked a good 45 minutes back to our hotel. I was amazed we did it. Luckily we paid attention in the taxi and figured it out. We made it back to our Hotel and decided to call it a night. We planned on staying two nights in Tetouan but changed our minds and instead to head back across the border to Gibraltar and try going there again.

View from Hotel