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TRAVEL NOTES WITH LAURA BAILEY

TANGIER, MOROCCO 

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The second instalment of our series with Laura Bailey takes us to the Moroccan coastal city of Tangier, exploring the layered pages inside the photographer, model, and writer’s travel diary.

Flanked by the meeting of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the north, and the dramatic Rif mountains to the east, Tangier is an energetic medley of cultures, traditions, and modern cosmopolitan life. Steeped in a rich, bohemian history that retains the spirit of its mid-century jet-set era, the city has long been a legendary sanctuary for artists and writers, from Henri Matisse and Yves Saint Laurent to Jack Kerouac and Tennessee Williams.

For Laura, this Moroccan escape was a long-held dream – a chance to slow down and get lost in the city’s labyrinth of streets.

Travel Notes Landscape

“Tangier has lived long in my imagination, fuelled by bohemian mythology and Bob Dylan’s elusive heroines. This spring I found myself breakfasting on the terrace with my son, mapping the city and our three days of exploration over coffee and croissants in the shade of the banana palms and a haze of bougainvillaea.”

Travel Notes Landscape

Like the city itself, the pages of Laura’s Dreams And Thoughts Panama Notebook form a scrapbook of scribbles and mementos – showing how a travel diary can be so much more than just words on a page, but a visual collection of the memories and tokens we collect along the way. The initial entries are a flurry of preparation and anticipation, reminders to pack a clay tennis kit and a Polaroid camera, and look into an exhibition of the painter Sylvia Sleigh’s work, right alongside a note to research for an upcoming trip to Florence.

Once in Tangier, the pages shifted into a curated mood board of cultural inspiration for her three-day adventure. Under a handwritten list of recommendations to track down, she jotted down a note to watch Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and to read Christine Mangan’s Tangerine.

Pasted around these notes were a postcard of James McBey’s 1936 painting El Marrakeshia, vignettes of the city, and reminders to look up local art history haunts and tennis courts. Her time on the coast was based at Villa Mabrouka, the cliffside estate and former home of Yves Saint Laurent, reimagined into a quiet retreat by Jasper Conran.

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Laura Bailey’s Tangier

From the handwritten notes and research within her blue pages, Laura shares her personal Tangier tips:

  • Stay: Villa Mabrouka
  • Eat and drink: Cafe Hafa, L’Ocean, Chiringuito, El Morocco Club
  • Activities: Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, Garden of Consolation
  • The Kiosk, Cinéma Rif, tennis at M'sallah Garden, and Hôtel Nord-Pinus for the art history
  • Activities: Visits to the Church of São João Batista, the local Capoeira school, kayaking or quad bikes via “Trancoso Adventure”, Trancoso Tennis, and horse riding
  • Shopping: Tangier Records, Les Insolites bookshop
  • Holiday reading list: Tangerine by Christine Margan, Nestling by Roisin O'Donnell, Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps