Last Night In Tangier

It was our last night in Tangier and Elena wanted fish. We left to do the blog dump and then go onto the El Dorado for fish. However, when we got to El Dorado, it was closed. A guy was asking us if we wanted to go into the restaurant.

I hope all these guys trying to be helpful are really touts. We just try to ignore them and push them off. It is possible that some of them are genuinely trying to be helpful and expect nothing in return. But there are too many who seem to want something. It reminds me of advice I heard for job seeking. The advice said you should use "proactive" text that assumes the company will want to hire you. Things like "Please tell me when we set up an interview." I hate writing stuff like that. It's so Amway-ish. The notion that you should play stupid mind tricks is not only insulting to the intelligence of the reader, but the fact that you are attempting to use a mind trick to set up an interview suggests that you don't think you can get by on the strength of your resume. These touts are like that. They seem to use these intelligence-insulting mind tricks and the reason they try them is that they can't offer true value added service.

Anyway, we headed to another place Elena liked in the guide book, Le Saveur de Poisson, I think it was called, but it was closed too. What's with all these places closed on Friday night? So we decided to go to the port. On the way, we realized we hadn't been up to see the Kasbah, so we climbed up there. There was a big hill. It made me wonder if this was the hill where the crystal merchant had his store in The Alchemist. There are a few hills, but this is one where you'd like a refreshing mint tea after reaching the top. I guess that's why the kasbah is there. The kasbah is a fortress. We were going to explore it, but a guy attached himself to us and wanted to be our guide. We weren't interested in having a guide, so we left and decided to try to come back tomorrow.

We tried a few more places in the Petit Socco but they weren't appealing (is anything appealing in the Petit Socco?) So finally we went down to the port. There are bunch of cafes are restaurants all lined up. In fact, reader of The Alchemist will recognise it as the location where Santiago got some tea and met the guy who stole all his money just after arriving in Tangier.

We stopped near a seafood place to see the menu and the waiters came out to greet us and lead us in. It looked pretty good, so we stayed. I had a plate of shrimp that tasted OK, but not great. Elena had some OK fish. I got a 10 dh salad that was actually very big for the money. However our drinks (Sprite and mineral water) were over priced at 10 dh and 14 dh (not sure which was which as the drinks weren't on the menu). At least there were a lot of locals there. Including one very bored/sleepy looking cat who got a little treat from Elena. (Interesting to note that in Tangier, stray cats are common and dogs are not in contrast to Montpellier which is the opposite.)

A couple of times while we were eating people came by to see if we wanted to buy something. One guy had socks and one guy had watches and bracelets.