Yesterday, or Saturday, I left Fes on a very nice bus heading to Chefchaouen, also known as Chaouen, also known as Xouen.  It's about a three hour bus ride, and it is truly lovely, going through orange farms, hills, over many rivers, all of which are moving quantities of silt downriver at this time of year.  I didn't nap, and that is unusual for me.  Planes, trains, and automobiles typically put me right to sleep.

Chaouen is a very picturesque town in the Rif Mountains.  I am writing from memory, so fact check at your leisure, but I believe it was founded by Andalucian Muslims escaping Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella  expelled the remaining Muslims at the end of the 15th century.  And all the guidebooks love to mention that only 3 Christians had entered the town walls prior to 1920, all under some form of disguise - and one of them didn't make it out - he was poisoned.  It's quite different today, as the town seems to be a required stop for backpackers in Morocco.

At the bus station in Fes, I had met a couple of Californian college students who were visiting Morocco after studying in Berlin.  We ended up staying at the same pension and sharing a room together, and I got to have real conversations that didn't require hand signals!  Truly a treat.  The town is adorable.  It is like a little Spanish village in many ways - tiled roofs, buildings painted in varying shades of blue and white, and more Spanish than French being spoken, though more English than I've encountered elsewhere in Morocco (people kept asking if we were Australian, so I think they see it all in Chaouen).

After a fantastic beef tagine with apricots, prunes and onions at Restaurant Timmeskal, we went to the "bar."  Alcohol is legal in Morocco but certainly not omnipresent.  Rare is the restaurant that serves it, and ours hadn't.  But our waiter told us that Hotel Palador had a bar, so there we went.  Imagine a brightly lit hotel lobby that is decorated more like an old folks' home, and you're getting the drift.  Inside the bar itself, which was off to the side, it was smoky with nary a female until we walked in.  No wine on the menu, but liquor and beer.  But they were out of the Moroccan beers, so we each got an Alhambra, all 250mL of it.  That was our wild night, and Becca and Elisha were off to Assila today.

Now we come to my umbrella.  It's just one of those umbrellas you buy from Walgreens when you're caught without one, but I somehow managed to hold onto this one for four years.  It had one droopy spine when I left the US, but so much the better from my perspective - I could ditch it at any time and no one would want to take it.  This poor umbrella has seen a lot of use in the last 13 days, and has degenerated considerably.  Half of it drooped, and closing and opening were feats of wrestling on my part.  The night manager of the Pension Castellan saw me fighting it this morning, and offered to repair if I would wait 5 minutes.  Now I have seen Anwar in action - he is handy, learned it from his father, he tells me.  But 15 minutes later, no amount of copper wire, plier application, or wood splints was bringing this one back to full life.  He did improve the opening and closing of it though, so I was quite grateful.

A bit later, standing on the square updating my GPS coordinates (35.16921,-5.26112 if you're interested - you can pop them into google maps and get the satellite view), I heard my name being called.  Anwar wanted to know if I would like a traditional berber soup for breakfast.  Yes I would!  So he took me to a small stall where we had a very tasty pureed soup of beans, I think, topped with olive oil, and eaten with chubs (ch like challah), which is how I'm spelling the round loaves that are omnipresent everywhere I have been so far in Morocco.  Some olives on the side and some mint tea, and I was satisfied.  I did feel rather like I was impinging on manly turf because I was the only female dining under the plastic awning, but foreign women live by looser rules as far as I can tell.  But it was another example of Moroccan hospitality that I have enjoyed.

My pension is next door to a hammam, and since the weather is terrible, that is my next destination.  Tomorrow, I may travel to Tetouan, or I may start the long journey to Essaouira on the Atlantic coast.  I haven't decided, but I will break up the journey to Essaouira in either Meknes or Marrakech or both.  I'll keep you posted.

I am having trouble inserting the photo, but here is a link that hopefully will work.  Ladies and gentleman, a shot of Chefchaouen:  http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/kDQnNR2hV7yV6KVI8OByKQ?feat=directlink