You know how pretentious people use the word "summer" as a verb, as in "I summer in the south of Spain"? Weird vocabulary aside, it makes sense why they would, because it's really pretty here. Our bus passed through a lot of idyllic countryside and beach roads before arriving in Tarifa. This small town has a unique claim to fame as being the origin of the word "tariff", so given the current political news, I thought now was a good time to ask the experts what's going on. Turns out I only know enough Spanish to rap "Donde esta la bibliotheca?", and they're too busy chilling on the beach to care. We didn't stay long, just enough time to get some dinner and one night's sleep. We'd pass through here again in a few days, but for now it was off to Morocco.

Morocco, or specifically Tangier, is surprisingly close to Spain. In fact you can easily see it across the Straits of Gibraltar, but it's still about a 1 hour ferry ride. This is only the second time I've "entered" a country by boat, if you count Macau - so I guess the first country proper. I don't really remember what the conditions were then, but it was very rough this time around. I suppose through genetic luck the waves didn't bother me at all, but Ashley and Ella could not say the same. They were pretty green-gilled, and even though Ashley had dimenhydrinate, it was a bit too late for it to do much good.

But with breakfast surprisingly still in Ella's belly, we made it to Africa, a first for all of us. And I'm just going to say I love Tangier. Like, really love Tangier. It's on the very short list of places I could see myself living, because it's just so different. We stayed in the old town, or medina. It's a network of small alleys somehow housing everything you'd ever need. And there is zero rhyme or reason to their layout, twisting and turning into who knows where. Fortunately Google has done a good job, because oh wow, I'd get lost instantly. The buildings are tall and people build out, so you sometimes can't even see the sky. But all the locals move about effortlessly, and I thought how cool it would be to grow up here, and have an internal GPS of where to go. Actually, in the off chance if you played an old DOS adventure game called Quest for Glory II, it's pretty accurate - except the alleys are even narrower.

But I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the other residents of Tangier - the cats. I saw more cats in the 72 hours I was there than I've seen in my life, I think. The locals take care of them, putting out food and water, even saying hello and petting them like they're old friends. I get the feeling they don't "belong" to anybody, but there's a really endearing level of mutual trust between everyone. We said hello to so, so many, but given our/my history with stray cats, we didn't do much petting - except the hostel cat, he was cool. Mostly they were pretty unfazed by people, you could walk right past them without them giving a single care. But they added a lot of character to the street, because you never knew which kind of cat you'd run into or where.

Narrow alleys full of coffee shops and cats is enough by itself, but I have had little exposure to Moroccan food. I've eaten tajine before, but as expected, it's on a whole different level here. Essentially just braised vegetables and/or meat, it comes in a still boiling kind of bowl with a hat on top. It's full of spices, and every one we ate was 10/10. And at every meal, you get an appetizer of olives a kind of Moroccan bread called khobz. Certainly I love olives, but I'm not usually much of a bread guy - it's just a vehicle to deliver other food. But not this bread. It's really good, and has a rough, semolina-like exterior. It's perfect for mopping up the tajine, and is the first bread I've ever eaten that makes me want to try and make it myself.

I think we didn't do too many notable things while there, mostly going to pretty spots and taking pretty photos. We saw the tomb of Ibn Battuta, a great explorer from ~800 years ago who went to even more places than Marco Polo. We also visited the former American Embassy, which was surprisingly lovely and kind of the highlight? Fun facts that I didn't know, Morocco was the very first country to recognize the US's independence. Also, this embassy is the one and only US federal landmark outside of the United States. It was basically just a colonial-era kind of home, but especially beautiful given its location in the narrow alleys. Nowadays the US embassy is somewhere else, as I'm sure it outgrew this place. But they still do American stuff, and now it's a kind of cultural center that puts on plays, has free classes, and lots of other stuff. Also their furniture is in amazingly good shape, and they don't care if you use it. It was pretty cool to sit at the ambassador's desk for that once-in-a-lifetime photo. I'll put Ella's here, but you can bet we all took turns.

But after days of olives, photos, and coffee (a majority Muslim country, no alcohol), Ashley moved onto another place in Morocco, while we took a much needed half day rest to make plans and figure out our life. In the short term, we really enjoyed our time in Spain, so we wanted to see more of it. So the next day we took the morning boat back to Tarifa, this time with Ella taking the dimenhydrinate before getting on the ferry. I'm glad we had a bit more time in Tarfia on this return trip, because although it doesn't have a lot, what it does have is surprisingly cool. The castle there has a long history, but what I like about it is it's not really "touristified". They pretty much just added some lights and said "Off you go", so it's more like a castle playground. One of the best 4 euros I ever spent, I loved it here.

After the castle we took a walk around this very beautiful beach town, just seeing what's around. It has a very cool "lazy seaside" kind of vibe, full of white and blue buildings, and people just taking it easy. We stopped by a few kitchy, local art shops, got lunch, and just took it all in. We've learned the bakeries in Spain are quite pretty, so we made the time to visit one in order to see the beautiful pastries. They were indeed quite beautiful, but I also figured we could get a snack for the bus. Ella spotted this massive piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, which somehow was only 1.5 euros. I was thinking, is that per 100 grams or something? Nope, it was for about 1/4 of a cake. I mean, if the price wasn't a good enough deal, it was also one of the best cakes I've ever had, carrot cake or not. Certainly didn't expect that from a small seaside town. Regardless, after a full lunch plus giant cake, we were nice and full for the 3 hour bus ride to Malaga, a place I know nothing about. I'm going to judge them based on their pastries, so no matter who loses, I win.