We were off to Tarifa for the night a cool laid back beach town. It is very popular with both wind and kite surfers.
Castle in Tarifa 
Tarifa also has a ferry that goes to Tangier in Morocco. Yep, you guessed it. Got up the next morning for our day trip to Morocco. This time around, we made it to Chefchaouen (the Blue City). The name Chefchaouen translated from Arabic means “look horns” and refers to the jagged mountain peaks overlooking the city.
No, we’re not in Spain anymore.
We were picked up by our driver for the 2-hour drive through the countryside into the Rif mountains to Chefchaouen. The drive was beautiful. Plus, we got to see a little of the how the Moroccan people live outside of the more westernized city of Tangier. Donkeys/Mules are still in use quite a bit for transportation.
The weekly market going on as we passed through on our drive.
Mohammad dropped us off to our Chefchaouen guide Hitsham. He grew up in Chefchaouen and did a great job showing us his town. We learned a lot about how people live. They still do some things as they had for hundreds of years, washing clothes in the stream, weaving on a loom, taking bread to one of the town’s ovens for baking.
One of the town ovens 
Women washing clothes
Fresh Honey
Men weave, women make the carpet.
We made a little stop for some fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. Now that is 100% juice, no additives, no preservatives.
Chefchauoen is nicknamed the “blue city” because of the number of blue painted houses. Why are they blue? It was first started by a large influx of Jewish people after WWII. The color blue is important in the Jewish religion, and they would paint their houses blue. It has also been said that the blue color keeps the homes cooler in the hot summer months, repels mosquitoes and brings in the tourists😊. So, yes in this 15th century town, more houses are now painted blue, and the houses are repainted multiple times a year for the tourists.
Lorraine, you can’t take him home. He is a newlywed.
Another Weaver
Mohammad came back to pick us up after a great lunch. Most of us had either the chicken or beef tangine. Mmm
As we were driving back, Mohammad stopped along the road to buy some fruit from a young girl for us to try. It was from the Greek strawberry tree. They were good and had somewhat of a peach taste. Arrived back in Tangier and had some time before our return ferry. Mohammad took us to an overlook for the nice view. It was a long day, but a good experience overall.
Well, we didn’t really have any time to explore Tarifa itself. We were off
the next morning. We made a detour to stop at the city of Ronda. Will didn’t like the drive up to Ronda, but the rest of us thought it was beautiful. Had lunch in Ronda and then went for a look at the old and new bridge. You know the new bridge from 1793. The city is constructing new viewing areas for the bridge and so that path was off limits this time around. We still got some decent views from some of the other viewing areas.
We were headed to Granada for a couple of nights. Will and I had visited the Alhambra in Granada before, but it was on a day trip via a tour bus. This time around, we had accommodations in the historic center. The historic center of town has numerous restrictions on vehicular traffic. We did have permissions for a few of the roads, but we made a wrong turn trying to get to the parking garage and may have been caught on camera. Well, guess we’ll see, if we get a fine in the next few months.
Got up early the next morning as our tour was at 9am. I booked us on the early tour as the Alhambra gets really crowded especially once all the bus tours start to arrive. Chema gave a good tour and as promised managed to talk almost the entire 3 hours of the tour. Such a nice complex and so much to see and learn, even the 2nd time around.
The ceilings 
After the tour, we spent the afternoon having lunch and taking a short nap. We had a walking tour scheduled that night. Lorraine, Will and I were the only ones that made it for the tour. The rest of the group had other plans or were just not feeling up to doing more walking.
We met up with our guide Pedro and the group set out for the Albayzin neighborhood. This is a medieval UNESCO World Heritage neighborhood from the 13th century. It’s an uphill trek with winding cobblestone streets and narrow city blocks. It also has some great views of the Alhambra. It contains many homes called Carmens, which are large homes with walled gardens or orchards.
Ceiling inside the San Nicolas Church 
San Nicolas Church Renovated in 2022
We kept walking to the Sacromonte neighborhood outside the Granada city walls. It’s an old Gypsy neighborhood of whitewashed cave houses. These cave houses provided safety to the Gypsies from the sun and religious and ethnic prosecution. Had we not been so tired from all the walking, we may have stayed at one of the bars for the Flamenco show in a cave. As our guide said, you can see Flamenco many other places in Spain, but Granada is the only place you can see it in a cave.
