About three hours by car north of Fes you will find a small town perched on the side of a mountain called Chefchaoeun. Chef-show-when. It is nicknamed the “Blue City” due to most buildings sporting some shade of blue.
No one can say for sure why Chefchaouen is blue. Some say it is a spiritual reason (sky and all that), and others say it’s a clever way to draw tourists (if true, it worked!).
For us it’s an easy one night stop between Fes and the port of Tanger Med where we will catch our ferry to Spain.
That’s not to say that Chefchaouen is without interest. Founded in 1471, there is a small medina and a fortress that overlooks the town. The fortress was erected to help defend the area from potential attacks by Portuguese invaders because, at the time, Portugal was launching attacks against northern cities and towns in Morocco.
Our driver picked us up at the Riad Fes and we sped north at 60kph as the two lane blacktop road was in pretty bad shape after all the rain that has fallen in Morocco over the past few weeks. Northern Morocco is remarkably green, with hillsides covered in olive orchards.
We arrived early afternoon after our three hour drive (more like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!). Our hotel is located on a mountain overlooking the Blue City and it is 157 steps from the street to the lobby.
Fortunately the hotel provides porters and so you don’t have to drag your bags uphill to the lobby.
After climbing all those steps we turned right around to explore the town as we only have the afternoon here and so back downstairs we went for the short walk into town. It’s very charismatic.
There is one small alley that the town seems to be centered on with streets running up and down the hill from it.
It’s easy to get lost in all the blue. Fortunately this is a very small town.
Despite all the blue around us we certainly aren’t feeling blue! This has been a terrific week in Morocco so far.
Tomorrow morning early we depart for the Tanger Med ferry port as we will cross over the Gibraltar Strait to Spain!
