The muezzin woke me at 4:47 AM. I know the exact time because I checked my phone, swore quietly, then realized I wasn't going back to sleep. My riad — a converted family home with walls the color of a swimming pool — had no soundproofing to speak of. But here's the thing about Chefchaouen at 5 AM: the light is insane.
I pulled on shoes, grabbed my camera, and stepped into the medina. And for the next three hours, I was completely, utterly, joyfully lost.
Into the Blue
There's a reason this town is called the , and it's not just marketing. Every surface — walls, stairs, doorways, flower pots, the undersides of arches — is painted some shade of blue. Cobalt. Powder. Cerulean. Periwinkle. The effect at sunrise, when the light hits at a low angle and the shadows go deep purple, is genuinely disorienting. You lose your sense of depth. Walls blend into sky. Steps disappear into passages.
I walked through Bab el-Ain, the main gate, and headed vaguely uphill. That was my first mistake. In Chefchaouen's medina, "uphill" leads to approximately forty-seven different dead ends, each more photogenic than the last.
A cat — orange, fat, unimpressed — watched me from a doorstep. There are roughly a thousand cats for every resident in this town. Nobody seems to mind.
The Accidental Photography Tour
By 6:30 AM, I'd taken 200 photos. Most of them were variations of "blue wall with potted plant" but I couldn't stop. The morning light turned every alley into a film set. An old man in a djellaba appeared from a doorway, nodded at me, and walked away carrying a tray of fresh bread. I followed the smell of the bread — that was my second mistake, or maybe my best decision.
The bread led me to a tiny bakery on a corner I never found again. The baker was sliding round loaves into a wood-fired oven. He waved me over, tore a piece off a fresh loaf, and handed it to me. It burned my fingers. It was extraordinary. He didn't speak English or French, and my Arabic is limited to "shukran" and "la" — but we communicated through the universal language of appreciative chewing.
I tried to pay. He refused. I tried harder. He refused harder. I left 10 MAD on the counter when he turned around. That's about a dollar.
Place Outa el Hammam at Dawn
Eventually, through pure luck, I stumbled into Place Outa el Hammam — the medina's main square. At this hour, it was nearly empty. Just a few cafe owners setting up chairs and one man sweeping in slow, meditative arcs. Behind the square, the 15th-century Kasbah sat heavy and serious, its ochre walls the only non-blue thing in sight.
I sat at a terrace cafe and ordered mint tea. It arrived in a silver pot, poured from a theatrical height, sweet enough to make my teeth ache. The cost: 10 MAD. About a dollar. I ordered another.
The square started filling. Tour groups don't arrive until around 10 AM — this was the local morning crowd. Women carrying plastic bags from the market. Kids in school uniforms. More cats.
The Waterfall and the Carpet Washers
A waiter pointed me toward Ras El Maa when I asked for "something to see." It's a small waterfall at the eastern edge of the medina, maybe a ten-minute walk if you don't get lost. I got lost. It took thirty-five minutes.
But Ras El Maa was worth the detour. Local women were washing carpets in the stream, beating them against flat rocks, the colors running in the water. Kids splashed in the shallow pools below the falls. Above the waterfall, the Rif Mountains rose green and steep.
This is also the trailhead for mountain hikes. I considered it for about thirty seconds before remembering I was wearing leather sandals.
The Spanish Mosque at Golden Hour
That evening — because by now I was fully committed to Chefchaouen's rhythms — I walked the 30-minute uphill trail to the Spanish Mosque. Unfinished, abandoned, sitting on a hilltop overlooking the entire medina. Free to visit, open all hours.
The view from up there is the postcard shot. The blue city spilling down the hillside, the Rif Mountains behind it, the light going gold then pink then purple. I arrived 45 minutes before sunset, as advised by my riad owner, and I still barely got a decent spot. Other photographers had been there since noon.
But here's what no photo captures: the sound. The evening call to prayer rising from multiple mosques, slightly out of sync, echoing off the mountain walls. The voices of kids playing in the streets below. A rooster, somewhere, confused about the time of day.
The Goat Cheese Revelation
Let me tell you about Chefchaouen's goat cheese. Jben, they call it. Sold at stalls throughout the medina for 5 to 15 MAD per round, depending on size and how much the seller likes your face. I bought a round for 10 MAD, paired it with olives and fresh bread from a neighboring stall, and ate it sitting on a blue step overlooking a blue alley with a blue cat staring at me.
The cheese was tangy, crumbly, nothing like anything from a supermarket back home. The olives were small, wrinkled, almost meaty. Together with that bread — which in Chefchaouen seems to be better than anywhere else in Morocco — it was the best $1 lunch I've ever had.
The Wednesday market (souk) apparently has the widest selection, but I was there on a Thursday, so I made do. "Made do" is generous — I ate an unreasonable amount of goat cheese over three days.
What I Wish I'd Known
A few things I learned the hard way. The medina is car-free, which is magical, but it also means you're carrying your luggage from the nearest gate to your riad. My suitcase had wheels. The stairs had opinions about that. Pack a daypack instead.
The Rif Mountains region is Morocco's primary cannabis-growing area. You will be offered kif. Frequently. A polite "la, shukran" (no, thank you) works, but you might need to say it fifteen times in a single walk through the medina.
And the ATMs — there are a couple, but they can be temperamental. Bring enough cash from Tangier or Fes. The currency is Moroccan Dirham (MAD), and the whole town runs at prices that'll make you feel briefly wealthy. A riad room in the medina runs 300-600 MAD per night. That's $30-60. For a room with hand-painted tiles and a terrace overlooking blue infinity.
Leaving the Blue
I stayed three days. I could have stayed a week. On the morning I left, I took the CTM bus to Tangier — 75 MAD, three hours — and watched the blue fade in the rearview mirror as the Rif Mountains closed in around the road.
Back in Tangier, everything seemed aggressively beige. I missed the blue immediately.
Chefchaouen is the kind of place that rewires your color perception. For a week after I left, every white wall looked wrong. Every gray building seemed like a missed opportunity. I kept thinking: wouldn't that look better in blue?
The answer, of course, is yes. Everything looks better in blue.
If Chefchaouen has captured your imagination, consider combining it with Fes, just four hours away, or the coastal medina of Essaouira. For more practical tips on navigating the blue maze, check out our 19 essential things to know before visiting.
