'Giselle updated her profile picture'
I splutter. My husband can make me laugh sometimes. But all over the streets of Chefchouen in Morocco's north, woman are posing in blue dresses on blue steps in blue alleyways.
The thing is, this blue city is on a tourist route precisely because it's painted blue. Sure, people visit because it's in a stunning setting, surrounded by mountains, and is great for hiking and nature, but the vast majority of people are here for the blue buildings.
We walk around early and catch it before all the shops and hustle open and yes, it is very, very pretty. Apparently it was painted by Jewish residents in the 1930s - why, no one seems to know. Perhaps to attract tourists, or to scare away mosquitos due to natural repellent on the paint.
However, we were asked over breakfast what our favourite town in Morocco was. We paused. It's not so much a town we can name, and it wouldn't be a tourist town. It'd be one of those towns in the High Atlas where we are driving through chaos on market day, people on donkeys bringing in baskets of fresh herbs, stalls of fresh bread, bags of lentils and rice, kids kicking footballs and high fiving Jamie as Butters pushes through.
It could be Chefchouen, very very early in the morning, before the stalls selling rugs and fridge magnets and straw hats with pom poms open, before the tourists come through in blue dresses to pose in front of blue buildings to update their new blue profile shot.
It could be a old town where you stop for an espresso and a pastry and watch life go by before moving on. It could be a place where we are sitting against a building in the shade eating bananas and baguettes and waiting for the Landie to have her brakes fixed. Or the place where the call to prayer echoed down the valley and no one sold us anything or even tried Favourite place? Not really. Perhaps a sprinkle of this place and a dash of another.
With Love,
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