Along with Whitney Houston the lineup included:

Juanes, George Benson, Ziggy Marley, Goran Bregovic, ZAO, ??? ????, Taraf de Haïdouks, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Rokia Traoré, Tony Allen, Nancy Ajram, Bonga, Diana Haddad, nass el ghiwane, Jil Jilala, Bigg, Darga, Saida Fikri, Fadel Chaker, Latifa Raafat, Fnair, Assala Nasri, Omar Pène, Ali Di Meola, mazagan, LAMCHAHEB, Saber Roubai, Oulad Benaghida, Nadia Ayoub, Mustapha Bourgoune, Rachida talal, Fatima Tihihit, Mohamed Damou, Hasan Yatimdunia, Georges Ben Son, Feshly Ground, D’autres

Not a great quality video! Sorry!

As unbelievable as this may sound as we didnt actually part company with hour luggage, we nearly had the new Moroccan shoes she bought in Morocco at the market in Tangier confiscated. Turns out you can only bring back a few small items as the shoes we bought in Morocco, a brand name pair, where considered illegal. Oh well note made for future reference.

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.

I wasn’t disappointed upon stepping off the boat. Robed figures stood around in groups chatting, smoking and eating snacks and like a single group you could see them beginning to way the pros and cons of making their way over to us and greeting us with the nationally accepted phrase “Taxi, very cheap!”.Anyways, like I mentioned, the whole trip was laid on as part of the business affair so we had a driver pre-arranged.

We traveled about one hour south to Larache, and reviewed a new hotel being constructed their in conjunction with the Azur Plan. I was amazed after leaving Tangier just how green the countryside actually was, I guess I had just stereotyped the whole country to be one huge desert, but travelling along, if I squinted a bit, I reckon I would have been in a slightly lighter shade of Ireland… minus the alcohol of course!

The trip lasted for two days, and before I had the chance to really soak it all up I was on the boat and returning to Marbella again. I swore I would be back to Morocco soon though, and in my usual prompt fashion, I returned 11 months later…bloody typical.