Day 46 - Bus to the blue city

A bit of a hassle to get a taxi this morning but we finally found one with a meter that dropped us off at the bus station. Unfortunately all the "comfort" buses were booked (put that one down to lack of planning again) so we joined the locals on one of their buses. The bus didn't have windows that opened and there wasn't any air conditioning apart from a hole to the outside near K's window. As sweltering as we were the other poor women must have felt worse in their long dresses and scarves. The driver told us it would take an hour and a half to get to Chefchaouen, we didn't really believe him and sure enough we arrived 3 1/4 hours later.

Our Airbnb was in the Medina so we were dropped off at the gate. From there we walked in to find our blue raid in the blue city. Just like the photos all the places are different shades of blue and part of the experience is to get lost in all the twists and turns of the narrow blue alleyways. The hassle from locals wasn't nearly as bad as we expected, once we politely said no we were always left alone. We found an unusual shop that sold fossils and bought an ammonite. 

This walled city seems to be different from others we have visited in that it appears as if local people live and shop here, so it wasn't all souvenir shops and tourist restaurants (there are still quite a few). The noise in the medina from the locals was very constant and we were glad it settled down a bit after 11pm.