It was amazing spending a day in another city, another continent even, when we were traveling to Seville. We had chosen a daytour to Tanger in Morocco, which was way out of my comfortzone. But we had such a lovely day and I’m super glad we went. We had seen camels and caves and after that, it was time for lunch.

We headed to Mamounia Palace for a traditional Moroccan lunch that was included in our tour. We were in for a treat! The restaurant looked absolutely amazing, like something out of a movie (apparently it was, I read online that part of Inception was filmed here?). I loved the ambience, there were musicians playing traditional music (check my highlights on Instagram for a video) and all of this was such an experience. The food was good, we had bread, soup, couscous (even a vegetarian option), some sweet treat and moroccan tea.

What an amazing experience! I read online that if you go here by yourself, it’s way overpriced, but we only had to pay the drinks since the lunch was included in our tour. Score!

After lunch our tour continued with a walk through the city center. There were some obnoxious sellers outside the restaurant so we decided to wait for the rest of the group in the foyer of the restaurant, where we found this cutesy little kitty.

The rest of the tour wasn’t as interesting, unfortunately. Our guide took us to some medicine sales pitch that went on for way too long. I did enjoy however, the small streets we wandered through. The streets were full of color, cats and salespeople and we saw a lot of stores that were filled to the ceilings with products.

We also came across a snake charmer on our tour through the city. I stayed watching for a bit, and took some pictures, but the whole thing looked shady and cruel to me, so I walked away quickly when I saw what was going on. These snakes were held in tiny boxes or sacks, only to come out to make a quick buck from tourists. The snake charmer continued to harass the snake with I-don’t-even-know-what he was holding, further maddening the snake so it tried to bite him, which he then, ofcourse, avoided gracefully. I don’t know about this, it seemed very sad and cruel to me. The snake obviously wasn’t happy, but scared and frustrated. It made me sad, so I turned my back to look at some cats and kittens that were chilling nearby.

Afterwards, our tour guide let us further into the city and then we visited a fabrics store. Here it all went wrong… It was so warm and stuffy inside, we decided to wait outside, talking to some people from our tour about the differences in our countries. After ten minutes or so, we checked the store to find our group had gone elsewhere…

My nightmare had come true: actually getting lost in this foreign city, this continent that I’d never been to before… Luckily, I wasn’t alone (thank the gods for that!) but we were with a small group of maybe 5 or 6 people. None of us knew the way in the city, but we decided we could find the group on our own, so we wandered around a bit, aimlessly, hoping to find them again. They couldn’t have gone far, could they?

We wandered and wandered, trying to find them whilsts ignoring all the street vendors that were being pushy and annoying. I tried not to panic. Surely we would fine them soon?

We didn’t. So we decided to be smart and headed back to the fabrics store. We were lucky to be able to find our way back. We asked the people in the store were our group went and luckily, they knew our tour guide and his route. The street vendors that had been pushy only a moment before, turned very friendly and took us to our group. It was so nice of them to help us and I was super relieved when we found our group.

By then, our tour had ended and we had some free time in the medina to explore and shop before heading back to the boat that would take us to our continent again. We didn’t want to wander too far, in fear of losing the group again… I actually wanted to buy this little guitar that some streetvendors were selling, and I kindof regret that I didn’t. Not sure what it was exactly, but it would have been nice to find out…

It had been an amazing day. Camels, caves, the amazing experience of the traditional Moroccan lunch, even the getting lost part made for some good stories. I absolutely loved that we did this tour. Was it touristic? Yes, it was and I won’t be able to find my way in Tanger if I go back, since we were just following a group. But I don’t mind, I’m super happy we did this. I stepped out of my comfort zone and learned that the world outside of Europe doesn’t need to be scary. Because it wasn’t. It was wonderful. I’m not sure I would have done this without this touristic tour, so I’m glad we choose this path ♥