Chefchaouen!!!! 🔵😍💙

So I have a habit of talking incessantly about how much I love DC, how my favorite city in the world is DC, how no city could be better, etc. 

But today, I visited a city that tops even DC: Chefchaouen. 

I have decided that I am coming here on my honeymoon. All of you guys should visit this city if you're ever in Spain or Morocco. It's impossible to capture how beautiful and unique it is through a simple blog post, but I will do my best. 

Chefchaouen started as a mountain oasis  for Jews and Muslims fleeing Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16the century. However, the name Chefchaouen is a Berber name, meaning "Two Mountain Peaks." Fitting, seeing as the city itself is nestled between two mountains. The Berbers, Jews, and Muslims lived in harmony in Chefchaouen for many years. The Spanish had significant influence in the 1900s, and the Spanish language became more commonly spoken. Elements of all of these cultures are present throughout the city. For example, the artisans in the medina cover their blankets and pottery with Berber designs. Menus and signs were often written in Spanish, like this.

This house says Dar Dadicilef, which at first sounds like nonsense. If you're clever, you realize that Dar means "home" in Arabic, and since Arabic is read right to left, "Dadicilef" read from right to left actually spells "Felicidad," the Spanish word for happiness! Home of happiness! Very true. 

I counted eleven mosques in the city, many built in the 16th and 17th century, indicative of the Islamic influence. One mosque was designated specifically as a mosque for Andalusian refugees. 

But perhaps the most obvious influence is that of the Jewish people. In many villages in Morocco, the Jews had their own section of cities, called the Mellah. The name Mellah comes from melha, the Arabic word for salt, because Jews back then were known for trading salt and spices. I have heard different reasons as to why the Jews in the Mellah would paint their houses blue. According to our tour guide, blue was a sacred color and it was used to ward off the evil eye. According to the Internet, blue is a sacred color and symbolized the sky, heaven, and God. Either way, there was lots of blue goin around in the Mellah. 

Funnily enough, however, most of the rest of the city was not painted blue until recently. Only when tourism to Chefchaoen started growing in the 90s did others start painting their homes and shops blue, because they noticed that tourists loved the blue buildings! And it's true! We do! 

I've decided that it's impossible to be stressed while living in Chefchaouen. Not only is the city itself washed with soothing tones of blue and white (besides the one rebel who painted his house purple),

 but Chefchaouen is a close knit community. There are communal baths (see last blog post), as well as communal fountains, waterfalls, and bakeries. 

Here's an example of a fountain:

The waterfall is where women come to do laundry, but now their main use seems to be a public pool for all of the kids in town. I dipped my hand in it. Felt cool. 

For the bakeries, people just walk down streets carrying a bowl of dough or a tray of cookies to the communal oven, ready to fire up some delicious baked goods, swap recipies with their neighbors, and bask in the delicious aroma of wheat, sugar, and smoke. 

Speaking of firing up some smoke, Chefchaouen also happens to be a major hashish hub. Those two mountains it's nestled between? Yeah, those are filled with hashish farms. According to our tour guide (who also happens to be running for mayor of the city, nbd), it's good quality, too. He claimed that the "agro-tourism industry was booming" which I'm pretty sure is code for "everybody wants to hike our mountains, smoke our weed, then chill in our awesome city." Considering the kinds of tourists I saw in the medina, as well as the copious paintings of Bob Marley hanging in shops, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the mayor-to-be knows his stuff. I'd totally vote for him if I could.

We ate lunch in a place called Cafe Aladin, which looked like a cafe from the movie Aladdin. 

I had Greek salad, keftah, and chocolate mousse, all of which were divine. 

I spent some time shopping and buying earrings, a t shirt, bracelets, a key chain...ya know, touristy things. My favorite purchase, though, was this:

A pencil holder with a camel around it and another camel inside a snow globe!!!!! What more do you need in life besides this???? 

After a delicious dinner in a clearly tourist-oriented restaurant, we split off on our own to explore. We found the waterfall that our guide had shown us earlier, climbed up a bit, and chilled on the side of a mountain taking pictures of the beautiful sunset and city skyline. All of the good pictures were on my friends nice cameras with expensive lenses, but I do have these:

Take my word for it, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. 

Later we trekked through the medina to find a shop (a hanoot) that sold ice cream, and at long last, we found one. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.