Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen sits in the Rif mountains, four hours north of Casablanca, and it is blue for reasons nobody entirely agrees on. What is not in doubt is what it looks like: a hillside medina painted in a dozen shades of indigo, with the mountains directly behind it.

The north of Morocco is the part most itineraries skip on the way to the desert, and it is the part that looks least like the postcard. Five days covers it properly: the capital, the Rif mountains, the blue town of Chefchaouen, the strait at Tangier and the medina of Fes, ending back on the Atlantic coast.