A long day stretched ahead as we dragged our tails out of bed at 6am to prepare for a day in Morocco. The ferry leaves Tarifa every couple of hours on a “35 minute” crossing…. yeah right, while the crossing itself may be 35/45 minutes weather depending the time to get tickets show passports load up the boat and all the rest takes about 60 minutes and to disembark takes another 15 (though to be honest this is not something to complain about, we walked straight off the ferry and into Tangier without even showing our passports.

The Port is literally 10 minutes walk to the town centre (all uphill except on the way back…obviously) and I would advice avoiding the initial “tourist trap” shops you will come across. The indoor market is basically a warehoue with so many stalls and vendors I got lost twice among the Armani jeans and Diesel shoes which in fact turned out to be two separate stalls… no wonder I was dizzy. I must say, the selection was AMAZING.

I have a theory about clothes, shopping and shoes that I feel I need to voice now so bear with me… not that you are in suspense I´m sure, this is hardy the most thrilling or dramatic blog you may come across but stick it out and you might be surprised.. roared the demon god of hell (that last bit was just to see if your paying attention). Anyway´s, shopping and shoes and Morocco. Here goes. In Marbella, where I live, there’s three shops I am comfortable entering to look for clothes and shoes, one is a sports store, one is a family run well established business and one is a corporate monstrosity which has my size and which I hate passionately. The rest of the shops are all for females… 80% of them anyway minus the odd butchers and bread shop ( this is a MASSIVE generalisation so hold your horses and don’t be shouting at me, pinch of salt and all that). The Shopping in Morocco is completely the opposite.

Every single shop is male orientated, and it must and has to be a cultural reflection of Morocco itself. Male dominated chauvinistic and all that jazz. I LOVED it! But hear me out, I loved it for one reason, the shops had a wide enough range of shoes and clothing to make it interesting, all the cultural and political views about Morocco I will cover in another post but lets focus on the shopping. In Europe im really tired of the small range of “fashionable” items a man is expected to buy and wear, those shoes you found that you really liked are only around for 12 months then they are discontinued ( or maybe the cheap labour factory where they where produced was closed who knows) and suddenly the new trend is all pointy skinny crocodile sandals… not me im afraid, so I wont part with my cash to satisfy a trend, but in Morocco, WHOOOO!!!!

Walls and walls of clothes and shoes all different colours and styles, and no item was out of stock, they had it all and even if lots of the items where copies ( though bloody good copies I will have you know) the things that where locally produced where excellent. I picked up a smart pair of leather brogues for work, very comfortable and real leather… 200 Diram… 20 Euros. ( the conversion rate is – minus a 0 of the end of the Diram price).

At home they would have cost 80-100 euros and I might not have liked them that much or at least as much as these. Seriously now I hate shopping but this was great!

My better half ( the wife) wasnt happy when we found the first shop for ladies… I reckon it was stocked by Blondie and the Pet Shop Boys and after 11pm it played A-HA all night…it was seriously 80s.. even the mannequins had day-glo green spiky hair.