Inevitably, if a country we’re visiting has mountains, Melissa and I will end up in them. We love being in high places and looking at even higher places. So it’s no surprise that after our housesit in Rabat, we headed straight for one of Morocco’s most famous mountain towns, Chefchaouen.
In many Moroccan cities and towns, plaster-covered buildings are painted white. In Chefchaouen, most of them are painted blue. The town has embraced the color—in every hue from pale blue to turquoise—and has become a must-see destination on Instagram. Twenty years ago, foreign visitors to Chefchaouen were mainly backpackers eager to chill in the mountains and sample the cannabis that’s widely grown in the area. Today, foreign visitors consist of busloads of tourists eager to get their pictures taken against quaint blue backdrops.
The crowds, the stalls selling tourist schlock, and the touts trying to lure you into cafes on the main plaza can get to be a bit much in the small blue medina (the old walled town). But it’s still possible to find quiet residential corners where you can sit and sketch. Melissa did that a couple of times, to the intense interest of several local children and at least one young cat, who kept trying to explore her art bag. It’s also possible to find hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the medina with a few tables and a husband and wife cooking wonderful food, as long as you’re not in a hurry.
If you need an oasis, you can escape into the lovely walled garden of the old kasbah, a fortress built in 1471 to defend against Portuguese forces who were trying to conquer northern Morocco. The quiet, shady garden was one of my two favorite spots in Chefchaouen.
My other favorite spot was the rooftop terrace at our wonderful hotel just outside the medina, Hotel Miramonte. Every afternoon, when the sun was low enough to make shade on the terrace, we took our laptops and my bird-watching binoculars up there to be surrounded by sweeping views of the Rif Mountains above Chefchaouen and the spring-green valleys below. I don’t think Melissa and I will ever get tired of gazing at mountains.
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