We had long been avoiding Morocco's big cities in favour of more remote destinations, but then came a weekend which found us on a train to Tangier. The typically four hour journey (which ended up being close to five) from Rabat gave us time to dig into a book, and before we knew it we were hailing down a cab to take us to the medina. I never got into the Beat poets nor any of the writers who had lost themselves in Tangier's maze of alleys, so I had no romantic notion of the city or feeling of nostalgia. Colleagues of mine insisted the medina was gritty and rough, but what I found was a low-key, easy to navigate town with good food and generally nice people— I say generally, because we were told to f*** off in English by two random men after politely declining their help as guides. Other than those two, people weren't pushy, and we had some genuinely lovely experiences. The contrast between city and desert is enormous, but there's always mint tea and a friendly as-salaamu 'aleikum.
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