Along with booking our narrowboat trip, booking our week in Tarifa was one of the earliest things we did in planning our European adventure. We decided on Spain, then decided we would like to stay in one place for a week, preferably in an apartment, then started looking for towns along the coast. When we looked at the map, Tarifa stood out because it was the southernmost point on the Spanish coast, and when we researched it and found there was an old walled city there, I was immediately sold. I love the "old walled city" and Europe is full of them!
On June 12th, we flew from London to Seville where we picked up a rental car and traveled the two plus hours down to Tarifa. I had been worried about finding the place because when I put the address into my map programs, it showed the location in a totally different place than the map on Trip Adviser showed it. I was communicating with the owner "Antuan" who spoke no English so I was using Google Translator to translate her replies to my emails and to compose my emails to her. When I expressed concern about the location of the apartment, she told me not to worry -- "just call me". I wondered how that was going to work since she spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish.
We found the apartment with little difficulty and I was somewhat surprised when Antuan turned out not to be the woman I was expecting, but a nice looking young man who greeted us with open arms and kissed me on both cheeks. His son, Christian, spoke a little English and we managed to get the information we needed about the apartment with no trouble.
The apartment was small but well laid out and had a private courtyard with lounge chairs and an eating area, a nice little kitchen, living room with flat screen TV, bedroom and bath (with a great shower).
The location was the best part about it as it was just a couple of blocks from an absolutely beautiful beach. There is a tiled walk that runs along the beach from where we were all the way into town but we preferred to walk down by the water.
A mile or two down the beach was an area where kite surfing was the thing to do. Tarifa is right on the Straits of Gibraltar and it is really windy, making it a kite surfing capital. There are kite surfing schools everywhere and we also saw lots of wind surfing and paddle boarding. We walked the beach almost every day.
The other thing we loved about Tarifa was going to the old town. We went there the first day and went to the Visitors Info office where we got a map of the walled city and spent lots of time exploring the narrow streets of the city. There were lots of restaurants and cafes where you could sit down and have a glass of wine or a beer and a plate of delicious olives.
One morning we toured the castle at the entrance to the walled city. Different parts of the castle were built anywhere from 400 AD to 1400 AD.
A view of the old town from the tower of the castle:
Outside the walled city, you could walk down a causeway, past another castle and arrive at the southernmost point in Europe, with the Mediterrenean Sea to your left and the Atlantic Ocean to your right.
One of the many reasons we picked Tarifa is that there is a "fast ferry" from there to Tangiers, Morocco. We planned to go over for a day to see a little of the city. Unfortunately, Bob came down with a bad cold while we were there and didn't feel up to doing a whole day excursion so it was our last full day when we finally made the trip. Several businesses in Tarifa booked tours of Tangiers and, even though it was cheaper to take the ferry over and back and do the group tour than to just take the ferry without the tour, we decided against it. We had read in Rick Steves' website that the tour was really hokey with snake charmers and camel rides and that it was better to just tour the city on your own so that's what we decided to do.
This is the ferry we took:
The day we went was cloudy and somewhat overcast so the views from the boat weren't too great. Still it was an easy trip and when we got off and cleared in to Morocco, we went looking for a map of the city.
We were approached by a man in a robe, saying his name was Larry and he was from the Moroccan Tourist board and asking if he could help us. We asked for a map and he took us over to the window and showed us the city, explaining about the new and old parts and what there was to see. We could see it would be a huge amount of walking, especially with Bob not feeling that well. Larry told us he would take us on a private tour of the city (listing all the things he would show us) for a total of 70 Euros. We debated but felt like we had been looking forward to seeing Tangiers for so long and this would be a way to see a lot in a short amount of time with commentary so we went ahead and made a deal with Larry.
You are probably thinking right now, "oh, no, this doesn't sound good" but actually most of the day went really well. Larry rushed us off into a cab -- and "rushed" is the operative word of the day. Larry looked to be about our age but I started calling him "Hurricane Larry" as he tore around the city with us trying to keep up with his long stride. In any case, the first part of the tour was in a cab and we drove through the streets of new Tangiers which looks like a relatively modern city. We saw the palaces maintained by the kings of Saudi Arabia and of Dubai as well as the gates to the palace of the current King of Morocco, who, according to Larry, is well liked and doing a great job. Larry was a native Moroccan and knew a lot about the history of the country as well as the current government and the politics. He would call for the cab to stop on a busy street, drag us out and tell us where to stand, grab our camera and take a picture. He even told us how to pose. He also encouraged us to take pictures with him. Larry was big on doors and posed us in front of countless big church doors as well as smaller doors on old houses.
After we had seen the new city, Larry had the cab driver drop us off on the back side of the "old" city, otherwise knows as the Kasbah. This was my kind of place with narrow alleys and old buildings everywhere. It would be easy to get lost in the short narrow streets without a guide. Larry mentioned several times how ecumenical Tangiers is and took great pride in pointing out mosques, synagogues and churches with their congregations living together in peace. We had lots of questions and Larry answered them all.
From the Kasbah, we moved on to Medina, the shopping area of town. The streets were lined with vendors selling spices, fish, fruits and vegetables, plants and souvenirs.
The picture below shows one of many booths that sold dried fruits -- lots of figs.
Herbs.... They had saffron really cheap but wasn't sure I could bring it back with me.
We wanted to stop and look for some presents but Larry urged us on, saying he was taking us to a better shopping place where everything would be together in one place. This is when things turned ugly. Larry told us the buildings in Medina that were above the stores on street level were "government run art schools" where local people were taught to make the local crafts that were sold on the street. He said he was taking us to meet one of the respected teachers of one of these art schools and we should be sure to say "Salom" when we met him. We went into a beautiful shop with gorgeous pottery and jewelry and were introduced to the teacher who took us upstairs for a private tour of the school. What we actually got was an incredibly hard sell of Moroccan carpets. We were given mint tea while a young man unrolled rug after rug in front of us. We kept saying we didn't want to buy a carpet but they wouldn't give up and really wouldn't let us go. We finally bought a wall hanging for too much money (and later regretted it).
After we left there, Larry took us to several other stores run (obviously) by friends of his but we resisted buying anything else. The whole thing was incredibly uncomfortable and kind of soured the day for us. At 2:00 Moroccan time (which was 3:00 Tarifa time) Larry took us to a restaurant for a Moroccan lunch. We did ask ahead about the cost and it was 17 Euros each for a multi-course lunch. We decided to go for it and the food was very good but we couldn't eat half of what they gave us. After lunch, we had to rush back to the boat to get the 3:30 ferry so we never got time to look at the street stalls of Medina to see if we could find any souvenirs.
We headed back to Tarifa totally exhausted -- we were glad we had the experience of seeing Tangiers but wouldn't want to do it again.
The next day we packed up our stuff, said good-bye to Antuan and to Tarifa and headed east along the coast. We had five days to get to Barcelona (about 13 hours away) and planned to drive along the coast, just stopping when we felt like it.
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