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In terms of planning the Fez trip was simple. All one needed was a taxi and a cheap hotel. But for excursions to places farther away, it was another matter. Students needed to get together in groups and plan for hotels, train tickets, etc. A split quickly developed between those who wanted to go to Marrakech and those who wanted to go to Tangier. I already have plans to see Marrakech later in the semester and so I opted for Tangier.

With an inordinately large group of students, I took a taxi to Meknes and then got a red eye train ticket to Tangier. Ten of us stayed in an apartment that belonged to a friend of a Moroccan student, which offered an impressive view of the port.

Unfortunately my trip to the north quickly went south. The entire first day I was exhausted from the train ride, but could not get to sleep. Also I found the city of Tangier to be a bit disappointing. It did have a few good things going for it—on a clear day it was possible to look across the strait and see the purplish outline of Spain on the horizon. Moreover, the city itself had a very international feel to it. Our Moroccan friend whose room we were borrowing exemplified this in that he was fluent in Darija Arabic, Fosha Arabic, English, Spanish, French and he was quickly picking up German.

Despite this, Tangier was no Fez. It was modern, polluted and overcrowded with tourists, or at least that was my impression. By the way, I have detected irony in the fact that travelers love to travel, but they hate places frequented by travelers like themselves. Everyplace they frequent they contaminate. At least I think that qualifies as irony; the word has been abused and stretched to so many meanings these days it’s hard to tell when it is appropriate to use it.

After a day in Tangier, my friend Phillip and I decided to make the jump onto the continent. We caught a ferry at nine thirty the next morning and off we were to Spain. When we arrived, we found that Spain, despite being only thirteen miles or so from Tangier (don’t quote me on that) was two hours ahead of us in time. We had just enough time to catch a bus to Gibraltar, walk around for a couple of hours and head back to Morocco. The trip turned out to be too expensive and time concerning to be worth it.

Gibraltar may have been the silver lining in the cloud. (Yes, English teachers, I’m using a cliché, darn it! Just try to stop me.) Though we only had time to pass through two sights made the trip worth it. Once, Phillip and I stumbled onto an apartment complex that had literally hundreds of union jacks hung up in preparation for Gibraltar National Day. The other was the view of the harbor, Spain and Africa from the top of the rock after we took a cable car to the top for the price of eight Gibraltar Pounds.

By the time we returned to Tangier we were both exhausted, but we renewed our strength at a local Pizza Hut. The Italians may have invented Pizza, but we Americans raised it to an art form. Thank God for globalization!

While I was trying to pay for my share of the bill I realized I had five different currencies in my wallet: Dollars, Dirhams, Euros, Gibraltar Pounds and Pounds Sterling. Getting that all converted back into useable Dirhams is going to be a pain.