11 November: Chefchaouen

This morning Varen went to the Spanish Embassy personally and his visa was denied again. Apparently he left his first application too late (well, not exactly him, it was due to delays on MDS Visa's part!! Annoying or what?) and today they said they needed a minimum of 4 days to process a Schengen Visa. He's flying in 2 days!

Luckily he managed to get hold of our travel agent who got him onto another flight altogether and now he only leaves Joburg on Friday and has a mere 4 hour stop-over in Madrid (don't ask me why she didn't put him on this flight in the first place?!). Can't wait to see him on Saturday :) But is so typical that he can get things to magically still work out at the last minute, that boy is just plain lucky!

Today I had quite a relaxed day. Had breakfast and then headed into the Medina to wander. Unfortunately it was very overcast today so the blues of the buildings weren't quite as brilliant as I think they can be. But I'm very glad to have had the day and night time experience in the town. I ended up buying a Moroccan Lamp I'd seen last night (wish I'd taken a photo of it when I'd first seen it the night before! Instead will post one once we've managed to "install" it above the dining room table - finger's crossed!). I saw some other nice things but, nothing else that screamed "you absolutely have to have me!". I'm still looking for some gifts tho but, it can be quite hard shopping for someone else when everything seems so trinkety. I was looking at getting a stunning tagine, only to find out that the gorgeous ones I was interested in are only for serving and can't actually be used to cook in (something to do with how it's glazed). Is such a pity because buying just for display purposes seems a little wasteful to me.

I ate lunch at an adorable little restaurant called Restaurant Al Kasba (that's it in the photo on the left). I had a nice shrimp tagine. After that I just made my way back to our lovely hotel to relax for the rest of the afternoon.

The hikers got back quite late so I'm completely thrilled I didn't do that! Although, after my Sintra experience, it wasn't very likely :)

I actually ended up having another wander thru the market with Helen when she got back from the hike - hanging out at the hotel is just not really my thing. I visited my friend Abdul again and ended up buying 2 bangles from him. I oddly really just wanted to buy something from him because he's made my visit to Chefchaouen more interesting. I have actually met and chatted with many of the seller's here since meeting him yesterday but, he had a certain charm. I got a photo with him too - naturally he had to dress me up in traditional scarves first but, it was far better than my experience in Egypt!