DAY TRIP TO
TANGIER
Yasmine Targuisti
On the 26th march in order to complete our
project we decided to visit the city of Tangier to know more about its
international history, because we all know that it has deep American roots.
We started the
day assisting the first class, that took place from 7:45-8:40 am; but no one
was concentrated because we were all excited about that day. The bus arrived at
8:40 am from our high school “Nuestra Senora del Pilar” to take us to the Spanish high school of Tangier
“Severo Ochoa”. Unfortunately the fact that we didn’t have the chance to meet
with our colleges of Tangier was a little bit sad.
We started the
tour right in front of the school.
We walked through
the old Medina visiting places like the Cafe de Paris, a place that used to be
visited by a lot of famous people like international writers, actors and
actresses… or the Hotel Minzah, where we had the pleasure to stop and to check
it with our own eyes: It is a traditional Moroccan hotel which has an amazing collection
of every famous person that has been there: most of them very popular actors
and actresses.
After that, we
continued walking until we arrived to the walled medina, which is the old medina
of Tangier. There we saw traditional shops of clothes like “shrabel or jlaleb”
or workshops that work with the clay to do some fantastic plots.
Then the American
Legation invited us to tell us more about the American history of Tangier.
The Tangier that
was described to us was so different from the Tangier of nowadays.
One thing to
highlight is the incredible showroom that there is in honor of Paul Bowles,
American citizen, composer, writer and translator. He became associated with
Tangier city in 1947 when he settled there with his wife. He was an important figure of American
expatriates in this city. Besides he lived in Tangier until his death, 52 years
later.
Next thing in our
route was to visit St. Andrews Church, and Anglican religious place.
Unfortunately we couldn’t visit the inside because it was occupied, but we saw
Anglican tombs there and some of them were of famous people.
After that we
visited the museum foundation Lorin, where a guide that worked there gave us a
short speech about the history of the museum, and all the celebrities and
politicians that where there.
It was time for a
break so we decided to go to the Continental coffee shop, where we had a small
snack to recover energy.
To finish the
journey we visited the Café Colon, to see where people like Paul Bowles and
others used to spend the nights having fun.
We didn’t had the
chance to try the drinks that the coffee offered to us, because we were running
out of time.
It was an extremely
interesting day, where we had a lot of fun, and we somehow introduced our selfes
a little bit more to the amazing American history that our country has.
