Chefchaouen- The Blue Pearl

Our second full weekend, we traveled 4 hours by bus to the Northeast part of Morocco to Chefchaouen, known as "The Blue Pearl." The whole city is painted in light blue and white which is known to repel mosquitoes and be pleasant to the eye. We arrived into town about 7:30 pm where we had a taxi waiting for us thank you to our riad owner. The taxi driver drove us through the medina, little alleyways with shops, right to the front door of Rifandalus Riad. (Thank goodness because we never would have found the one door set back into the wall with only a little sign above) The Riad was a quant, little hotel with only 2 rooms on each floor went up about 5 flights. Our room was entitled Rabat and was on the top floor with the most magnificent patio overlooking the Riff Mountains and the Blue City. We spent the rest of the night checking out the medina and night life.
The hotel owner also set us up with a tour guide for Saturday morning at 9:00 am which ended up being a 74 year old man who literally kicked our butts for 5 hours. The guide started through the medina where he pointed out little spots in the shopping areas. He then took us to his house so he could change shoes to take us into the mountains. The whole town is set on the Riff Mountains so all the streets, actually walkways, are constant hills and stairs, up and down. We set out for the Riff Mountains  around 10:00 and wound our way through some rough and rocky hiking trails. It seemed our guide was well known among the country people as he always had some comments to say to everyone we ran into. We stopped at one country house and had tea with the family that lived there. We then made our way up through the wandering goats and past the wheat fields to wonderful lookouts of the city.
We went back down to the city around 1:30 to have lunch at a cafe and finished our tour to the last spots in the medina. We definitely needed a break after that so we took a little nap time and then set off for the Kasbah which is a walled area inside the medina. The Kasbah included a park area, old jail, museum and other historic sites. We spent the rest of that evening doing some shopping in the medina and went outside to have supper in a cute little sandwich cafe. The owner of the riad picked us up again from the hotel and took us in his personal car to the bus station Sunday morning for our 7:00 am departure.

View from our room's patio on the top floor

Our room (apartment)

This room is commonly used as an apartment and was probably the most quant room I have ever stayed in. 

Beginning of our hike in the Riff Mountains.

View of the city from the lookout at the Spanish Mosque.

A place in the medina where the women take their clothing and items to wash in the water piped in from the mountains.

A blue alleyway in the medina.

Most of the medina were walkways like this painted blue and white.

Horses grazing on the mountainside during our hike.

Women hauling wheat to process into flour for bread. 

Mosque in the country side.

Our guide returning back to town. He was fast!

Jail in the Kasbah

Inside the Kasbah

Outside the Kasbah

A woodworker who was making kitchen utensils right before us!! He was fantastic!