Four Continents, My Lens: A day in Tangier

While we slept and spent lots of time in Assilah, we took advantage of the fact that it's located only 40 minutes from Tangier to explore that city a bit! I had never been there and Othman was very small the last time he was there. Not having a guide (his uncle who lives in Tangier was out of town) we ended up getting lost more than a few times, but were able to see quite a lot of the city as a result! Our first destination was in the old medina, and finding it was no easy task but we made it eventually.

The walk in:

Then we got sidetracked...

and got our first view of Spain! It's that small dark line above the clouds.

Not long after that we found a museum which used to be an old palace. Wandering though it was impressive, as I imagined all that must have taken place within itsits walls. Othman and I agreed there was something distinctly Game-of-Thrones-esque about the place!

While the museum wasn't particularly well set up, and informative only in the driest of ways, the experience of walking through the palace and stumbling upon things like these was incredible:

Afterwards we followed some terrible signage looking for the tomb of Ibn Battuta (the Marco Polo of the Arab world, who happened to be from Tangier) but were disappointed to see it was just a little building the size of a shack that was dedicated to him. It was also locked. Then we realized we were extremely lost in the winding pedestrian streets of the old medina, but were saved by a guide in the form of a ten year old girl. Phew! I posed in front of this pretty wall on the way down:

Leaving the city we headed up to Cap Spartel which is in a large national park just minutes from Tangier. The cape features a historical lighthouse that we admired. Unfortunately the clouds were blocking most of the view we should have had of Spain and the Atlantic.