Market delights, grabby monkeys …and a distant roar
Ilast wandered through the medina of Tangier as a 19-year-old on my way to Marrakech. Returning at the beginning of a brief but blissful holiday on two continents – Europe and Africa – I felt a sudden tug from the past.
We were strolling through the food market when a distant roar of voices surged up past the rows of stalls selling spices, oranges and the glossiest dates you’ve ever seen.
Now I remembered the explanation for that cavernous sound. In a vast and gleamingly white-tiled hall, fish-sellers standing on raised platforms flashed and twisted their sabre-swift knives as they bantered with buyers across rows of exotic, rainbow-coloured fish.
Heading back to Spain on the evening ferry, I peered into the sea that bred such creatures as we chugged towards the orange-tiled domes and pointed-hat roofs of distant Tarifa.
Our exotic holiday had begun with a flight to Gibraltar, where we stayed at the plush Sunborn Yacht Hotel. A sojourn on an obligingly absent multimillionaire’s trophy-boat without ever having to brave a storm at sea? Bliss! We felt we’d been granted all the perks of life. I vaguely remembered Gibraltar as a noisy one-street town with a lot of loud pubs and grabby monkeys. Times have changed. The Rock’s famous monkeys are still in residence but the pubs have mostly given way to charming cafes.
It’s well worth a stopover even if you don’t fancy cocktails atop the Rock and views of North Africa across the narrow Straits.
Just beyond Tarifa with its pretty Spanish shops and decorative Moorish architecture, aloof, relaxed and ineffably cool, stands the Hurricane Hotel.
It is the most effortlessly enjoyable country hotel I’ve stayed at anywhere in Europe. Lovingly restored in the 1970s,