Early start to head out to Tangier today. The Uber equivalent in Casablanca and Rabat is a service called Careem. They set up in Rabat just for our sake so they’re just starting out but I really like them. They have a handy feature where you can schedule rides for in the future. Knowing I’d be getting an early start today I had scheduled a pick up the night before.
I whipped out my phone to check my drivers progress. He was heading my way still but hadn’t quite arrived. That’s forgivable, I suppose. I check a few minutes later and he still hasn’t moved. Hmm. Another few minutes later and his icon starts moving, ah he must have just not had reception. Oh wait… he’s moving the wrong way. Well I don’t always know the street layout. Maybe something is one-way or closed. Another few minutes he pops up again, even further away! …wait a second. He keeps popping up at the tram stops. He’s on the tram! He’s not even in his car! He’s just on his way out of town! I’m forced to cancel the ride and hail someone on the spot. Luckily, there’s another driver not to far away so it’s not much of a set back.
Swing by my friends place and pick her up and then make it to the train station in good time so we sit at Cafe Segafredo and have several coffees waiting for our train. After almost boarding the wrong train we befriend a Dutch guy who is also traveling around Morocco and on his way to Tangier and he graciously points out to us the correct train.
After an uneventful, but eye-opening ride across the Moroccan countryside we arrive in Tangier only about… 90 minutes late. Not too bad I suppose on Morocco time. There’s no Careem in Tangier and our AirBNB is about a 20 minute drive from the train station. As we walk out I’m mentally preparing myself to negotiate with the swarm of anxious cab drivers. The first guy asks for 100 dirham which to me is shockingly low. (I’d later learn 50 is a more appropriate rate for this drive) I’m totally thrown off and after exchanging surprised looks with my travel companion we jump in and take off.
We are staying in the Kasbah and meet the caretaker for the property outside of El Morocco Club, the local bar and jazz joint. He’s accompanied by a guy named Karim (as distinct from the car service) who appears to be some sort of small time hustler who really keeps things moving in the Kasbah and appears to make his living acting as an informal “go-to guy” for all the Western tourists. Having seen this game before I’m immediately pretty wary of this guy. But they take us over to our place and show us around and get us settled in.
The AirBNB we have is an awesome four bedroom place spread over four floors with a gorgeous rooftop, from which you could see all the way to Spain. Pieces of the Bourne Ultimatum were filmed in our alley and our immediate neighbors include(d) Steve Forbes and Matisse. Not too shabby.
After working for a short bit we decide it’s time for lunch and attempt to head over to El Morocco Club as it’s the only place we’re familiar with at this point and it’s right at the end of our little alley. We’re immediately pounced on by our buddy Karim who is full of inquiries about what we want to do. We try and demur for the moment and tell him that we’re just trying to have lunch at the Morocco Club but he tells us it’s closed for lunch. A claim I view with skepticism at first but closer inspection bears him out on this. He has recommendations (of course!) and we having no better alternatives follow them. So he summons one of his lieutenants to walk us down through the Kasbah to what is surely one of his buddies restaurants.
I’ve no club what the place was called but it wasn’t bad. They had no menu really and just proceeded to bring us a three course Moroccan meal with was pretty good but also way more food than I was banking on. Turns out the owner of the joint has a friend who works at a Moroccan restaurant in Denver. My time in Istanbul taught me that every person who wants something from you has a brother, sister, uncle or best friend who lives in Denver so I view this claim with suspicion but he seems to have the right amount of detail…
Our new guide, Mohammed, is very keen to show us around the Kasbah (for a tip no doubt) and says he’ll meet us back at the restaurant in an hour to show us around. I’m initially not super keen on walking around this maze and being hustled by these guys but we don’t have other plans at the moment so… what the hell.
He turns up at the end of lunch and we head out. Fairly quickly I’m glad that we decided to tag along with him. He walks us around to some of the major spots throughout the Kasbah, tells us about how the neighborhood is organized and points out all of the movies that were filmed right here. In addition to the Bourne Ultimatum, Spectre and Inception were also filmed right around the corner from us. As these things tend to, the end of our walking around included some visits to his buddies shops so they could try and sell us some things. I did buy some tea so I’d have something to drink in the morning as well as for the fun of negotiating with the spice merchant.
As he deposited us back at home I was glad that we had decided to walk around with him despite the sales pitch because it was really interesting.
In the evening we made attempt number three to go to El Morocco Club! This time we were actually successful. I really liked the place, the basement piano lounge was very well appointed. Slightly annoying was the fact that they had a DJ instead of piano but I think that was because it was a Friday night. We didn’t have a reservation so we got shooed out of our seats as the evening went on but after a day of travel and walking it was time for bed anyway.