Trip to Morocco: Day 3

Our third day in Morocco was spent in our third city: Chef-Chouen. This is a city in the mountains of Morocco with about 600,000 people. It is the education and shopping center for the surrounding mountainous areas. It was a breath-taking bus ride- I was impressed with our bus driver's ability to turn corners (without guardrails) at full speed without rolling the bus down the side of the mountain. Though I think we came close a few times. 

Chef-Chouen is known as the blue city. Why, you may ask? Because almost all of the buildings in the city are painted blue and white. It gets so incredibly hot there during the summers, that by painting their houses blue it keeps the temperature a few degrees cooler. It is also beautiful to look at:

And, as in the other cities in Morocco that we visited, there were cats everywhere.

The one building that stood out was the mosque in the center of the city. Green is the color of Allah in the Islam religion, and therefore this color was not painted in blue.

We ended our tour at the edge of the city where the people come to the river to do their laundry and fill up their water jugs. 

It was another unique look at Morocco- we had seen two different urban settings, but this was more of a country-type lifestyle. However, it also had the best shopping of the trip. There were knock-off bags, watches and sunglasses, as well as leather products, ceramics, scarves, carpets, jewelry, etc. And all for pretty cheap (if you are a decent negotiator). Unfortunately due to our "rich faces" as one shop owner told me, prices immediately skyrocketed upon seeing us. But I learned a very valuable lesson- there is no better negotiation technique than walking away when in Morocco. Store owners would drop the price by 50% or more if they thought we were going to walk out of the store. Which tells me that they were still making a healthy profit off of our negotiated prices. 

Regardless, we left happy with our purchases at relatively low prices. After a few hours on a bus, a ferry, and another bus ride we arrived back in Sevilla after three eventful but fantastic days in Morocco. I apologize for the length of these three blog entries- I try to keep them short so that they're interesting to read, but I had too much to say! I hope you enjoyed them for the most part.