Lost in Tangier

[irenegro]

"I am, in short, trying to break free of the constraints of modern travel, of a culture in which every minute is rigorously planned, and we grade destinations based on how they live up to our expectations. I want to have no expectations. I plan to show up with neither hotel reservation nor guidebook; instead of devising my own itinerary, I will let the place itself guide me, and in doing so, I will, I hope, find myself caught up in moments I never could have imagined.
...
My solution: submission. Left across that courtyard, or right along that cobbled path? Don’t ask me; ask my feet. Every day I surrendered to the whims of my limbs, and was presented with a montage of medina moments: the interplay of geometries, the soft arches and domes sliced by rigid shadows; a small plaza where, in the afternoons, birds sang in a monumental cage; a blind man in his prayer cap sitting by a stucco wall; children in knock-off Crocs; a man polishing bronze urns in the vibrantly tiled lobby of an old pension."