Morocco Trip (through Portugal, to Spain)

 April 2009

 
In April 2009, me and my friend Anup set off to Portugal, Morocco, and Spain, with Morocco as the main attraction of the trip. On Friday, we flew from Prague to Lisbon and stayed 2 nights there, bar hopping. We stayed in the historical center (hotel Pensao Globo) and I must say I have never seen before what I saw there - thousands and thousands of people in the streets over the night, drinking, with bars just a few meters from each other in the whole area around the hotel. If you want to party, go to Lisbon. Aside from that, you might want to see Jerónimos Monastery or Belém Tower, the latter built in the 16th century as a commemoration of Vasco da Gama's expeditions, subsequently used as a prison.

On Sunday, we flew over to Marrakech and spent 2 nights there in beautiful Riad Aubrac. When in medina, pick a good orientation point you can always find and learn how to get back to your place from there. Remember that Morocco is a muslim country so alhocol is rather rare but if you have a good guide book you can find some excellent places. We have not decided in Prague what to do for the rest of the week, we just knew that we would be taking a ferry from Tangier to Tarifa on Friday. So, we randomly picked a travel agency which arranged for us a 3 day trip to Imlil village or rather a small town, not charted in the map on the right; we stayed in Riad Imlil. When leaving Marrakech we took the longest avenue in Africa. In Imlil we did 3 one day quite difficult tracks in the Atlas Mountains. When we got back to Marrakech we took an overnight train to Tangier. Moroccan railways are supposed to be the best in Africa but that doesn't mean you can book the train ticket online or outside of Morocco. You have to go to the station yourself, buddy. The main station was really nice. 20 minutes after we set off all the lights in our sleeping wagon went off and 15 minutes later we heard a rather big explosion that came out from the switchboard, followed by a cloud of black smoke. We stayed in the dark for the rest of the trip. That's probably not common there. We hopped on the ferry just a few hours after we arrived to Tangier and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Tarifa, and then continued by bus to Seville.

We spent a Friday night in Seville, saw a flamenco show and were enjoying atmosphere of this nice town in a few bars after that. We flew to Barcelona the next day and spent the Saturday night there. Enjoyed great tapas and beer when wandering through the city center. We flew back to Prague on Sunday.

The maps used are from the CIA's World Factbook, it was the only source of freely available maps I found and I had to help myself to put together the area needed, as you can see I guess.

Morocco Trip

Lisbon

Marrakech

Atlas Mountains

Back in Marrakech

Tangier

Tarifa (Spain)

Seville

Barcelona

I stopped taking pictures at that point of the trip, you can see pictures from a dedicated trip to Barcelona from January 2009.


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