Essaouira

On Tuesday we had a wonderful day being pampered at the spa and set off for Essaouira Wednesday morning(ish!). After many dodgy African bus rides between us we were expecting to show up and see a piece of crap that would make the journey a bit of a religious experience, but no, the bus looked like a National Express (nicer than Greyhound for the US folks)! We climbed in and two and a half (pretty comfortable) hours later we arrived on the coast.

When we clambered out the bus we were greeted by men with wheelbarrows trying to grab our bag and take us to the hotel. Thinking ourselves wisened and well travelled we refused their 'help' and hailed our own cab which dropped us off about 100 yards down the road at the entrance to the medina (the old part of town surrounded by a wall and off limits to cars). We asked for directions a few times, but found pretty quickly that in Essaouira virtually noone knows English and our French (ok, really Gillian's) was no match for the rapid fire instructions we were given.



After walking up and down the same bloody road about three times we gave up and asked the police, who then asked the pesky guy with the wheelbarrow if he knew where it was and told us to follow him. We couldn't quite explain to them why we *really* didn't need his help, so off we went. About five minutes later we arrived at our riad, and handed over about $4 for the pleasure of the escort, by that time feeling a bit ashamed of snubbing the poor bloke at first.

We dropped off our bags and noted quite gleefully we were the only guests in the place. As a result we got an amazing room - practically two floors with beds on opposite sides of the giant room with a full floor with living room below and step ladders to climb up.

Keen to investigate we climbed the town walls and found amazing views. Gillian was much braver than me and scaled up the wall to walk on the edge and was quickly joined by the kids in the picture.



We found the old square just in time to watch the sunset, it took only about a minute to completely disappear.

In the mornings we had breakfast on the sun terrace of the riad - in one direction you could see the sea crash into the wall, in the opposite the outline of the mountains. It was pretty incredible to watch all the people around carrying on with their lives on the tops of these really tall buildings - construction, farming, relaxing - just about anything you can think of.



One of our best meals in Essaouira was in one of the tiny stalls on the quay. We chose our brunch from the freshly caught fish shown in the picture and they barbequed it for us right there. We loved our time in Essaouira and would happily go back again!

The Essaouira coast

Marrakech

Last Sunday my friend Gillian and I took off for Marrakech. We didn't really know what we were heading into - just looked forward to warmer, sunnier weather than miserable old England.

The first sight that greeted us was the fantastic mosque (left) next to the amazing Djemaâ el Fna (below) square. The picture doesn't really do the square justice - there seemed to be a million people and a million stalls selling everything you can imagine.

Our first evening we spent enjoying the freshly squeezed orange juice and taking in the square. Watching the sunset on the mosque was a highlight of the trip - that first evening was easily the nicest sunset we saw all week!

Our riad was tucked into one of the tiny streets in the medina (old town) and one morning we found these donkeys resting just around the corner.

Our last night in Marrakech we spend wandering around the street food stalls in the square. Hassan (right) came up to us and said he was hungry, so we stopped and got him a chicken kebab and chips. He was digging into the food with gusto when we looked over and saw Lissan and Wassan (left and middle) looking hungry on the side - turns out they were with Hassan. We invited them over and all of them had their tums filled, though the guys on the stall thought we were a bit mad!