During our day in Fes, we toured the tile district where they make things like this out of tile. Un-freakin-believable. This particular tile is actually in an old madrassa (Koranic school) and depicts a Koranic lesson in calligraphic Arabic. Nope, I can´t read it, either. The tile district (where I got to play in the clay!) involves different people throwing clay pieces, firing them at several hundred degrees Celsius, hand painting with imagined designs, hand-chiseling with very sharp tools into absolutely perfect little geometric shapes (or curves, as seen above), then pieced together upside-down in a mold and cemented together to make the most gorgeous mosaic fountains, backsplashes, countertops, sinks, etc. that you have ever seen. Ever.
We drove through the countryside from Fes to Chefchaouen--the whole drive reminded me of how I mentally picture Italy. Who would think this is North Africa?!?
Chefchaouen is the ´blue city´: all the walls of the city (and all the houses in it) were whitewashed years ago to keep out insects. Now, the same thing is done for aesthetic reasons, and most of the doors, windows, and details of houses are painted in brilliant, different shades of blue. The stairway in our hotel (Casa Perleta, in the medina) was positively ultraviolet when you walked up in mid-afternoon. Incredible.
This was one of our last views from Morocco: we caught a ferry from Tangier to Algeciras, Spain (the whole trip was actually more difficult, involving a cancelled ferry trip that we had tickets for, 10-15 foot high waves on the Strait of Gibraltar, seasickness on the ferry and a bus trip on which the windows were completely whited out with....something).NEVERTHELESS, we are in Spain.
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