Essaouaria Weeks 2-3

We found our happy place in Morocco: Fatima's riad. We happily spent our days on the roof terrace in the sun, wandering the medina, noshing on tasty foods, walking on the beach, and playing with the cats.

Our very generous riad room, with windows to the central courtyard.

The heart of the riad. The garden on Floor 0 (they do floors weird over here)

That's our room on the 2nd floor, in the center. 

The blue room above is where we had breakfast on the roof.

View from the upper terrace.

The upper terrace, looking over the medina.

Lucy doing some light reading.

We've discovered that olive tree wood burns very well.

Soothing waves, overlooking Mogador Island.

Raindrops in the courtyard of the riad. Sound on.

From the Portuguese Wall.

The (very smelly) active fishing port. Lots of anchovies!

From the riprap.

The fishing fleet.

Happy feet on the terrace.

The sunsets were not spectacular everyday, but we enjoyed our evening rambles.

On our next to last day we had our nicest weather. We finally walked to the south side of the bay.

We weren't the only people out that day.

The view south to Cap Sim

This is an old Borj (fort) that used to guard the causeway to Mogador Island.

Obligatory selfie.

Walking on the beach, dodging camel poop.

The weather starting to blow in. Mosque and prison on the left side.

Looking the other direction to Diabat.

Thought I'd throw in a panoramic from the dunes.

 The view back towards the Borj and Cap Sim after we got back to our Riad. The weather held off.

 Our last view of Essaouira from the bus on the way out of town.

Caturday

Cats and Islam are a longstanding pairing, and cats are welcomed virtually everywhere we've been. Our latest riad has at least three resident adult cats who spend their time on the terrace and in a limited number of public spaces. And there are four volunteer kittens (their mother slipped in through a temporarily open door to deliver them, we were told) who provide much entertainment. Beyond the walls of each of our riads are the many (thousands??) of cats in the medinas. We've decided to share some of them with you.

One of our riad cats greeting us from the kitchen window.

Neighbor kitty from across the roof.

Lucy had a reading companion.

AAAH, sunbeams.

Typical medina cat with zero effs to give about blocking an entrance.

Yes, they sleep everywhere.

Yup.

...and do cat things wherever the eff they want. Yes, yes, I will groom myself in the middle of the walkway.

If all of these cats look similar did we mention all of the pregnant ones we saw?

In a box, in a bin, anywhere I will sleep.

Is this your twin?

Room up there for a third?

Oh you thought those seat cushions were for people? My bad.

As a precursor to this, we recently had several rainy days in a row where we spent significant time with the cats in our riad. There was lots of downtime...

 

This is actually the first day we arrived and saw the kittens.

 

This is on our rainy day, the kittens decided to join us.

 

 I had to move to capture the action better...

Almost peak kitten cuteness.

 

Peak kitten cuteness/destruction?

I'm glad those curtains aren't mine.

~ Lucy & Brian

Essaouira. Week 1

Essaouira is a small town, at least the Medina where we are staying is small. We're told there are over 75,000 people here but it doesn't feel that big. It only takes about 10-15 minutes to walk any place within the Medina. We managed to cover most of that within the first couple of days quite easily. Most people probably don't visit for 3 weeks but that's our plan and humbly, we are not most people... We have seen many different types of traveler here so far, a large majority French. We've run into our second group of "Cannonball Runners"; that is what I call them anyways. Apparently many people like to drive their version of the Europe to Africa Rally. We ran into an English couple in Chefchaoen that were driving from Sheffield to Banjul, Gambia during a three week "race." They had purchased a car for £500 and were planning on donating it at a charity auction upon completion of the drive. We have now run into a group of Austrians doing a proper Paris to Dakar drive. This is a thing people do. Who knew?

How about some photos instead of me blathering on?

Bait and switch, how about a couple of videos instead.

Lots of interesting Terrasses to explore.

To the left was a weird glass-walled bedroom, I should've taken a photo...

Our first beach walk after dinner.

Not bad for our first sunset.

Pretty sure these guys were the horse ride salesmen filming their promotional video.

Mogador Island.

The view from our first breakfast.

The tide was pretty high on our second day.

No shortage of sand here.

Cat ladies are universal. This one was celebrated in the Christian Cemetery.

The first headstone we've seen that mentions Covid.

They lied, totally not open.

Sadly this is the only photo I have of the best sunset we've had so far. I took it for granted...

Moral of the story, not all sunsets are created equal.

From the Portuguese wall.

Oh yeah, Lucy is still alive.

These are part of the purple islands. I'll let Lucy tell you all about them.

[Okay, I could spend a LOT of time talking about Phoenicians, snails, and textile dyes. Because I am an absolute nerd about this stuff. However, you're just here to look at pretty pictures. So I'll keep it brief and say that when we use the phrase, "to the purple born" or "royal purple" we do so because the dye to make the color was extremely rare, difficult to make, and expensive and thus reserved only for the highest ranks. It was made by using the secretions of the snail Murex, found in a few places in the Mediterranean and here - in Essaouira. There is evidence it's been sourced from Mogador Island since at least 100 BCE. Which is really cool.] 

[[Even more nerdy: did you know that the very first petrochemical dye developed was also a shade of purple? We now call it mauve.]]

Hey bird, get outta my shot.

We've had some pretty nice days here. Obligatory camel shot.

Ho hum

French tourist trap, but it had a nice terrace. Good company too...

So at this place we were speaking to a guy messing with the music and playing with two small dogs. Lucy asks if he owned the place, he said "No, I'm just the sound designer."

Lucy and I about broke our eyes rolling them at that. He was absolutely French.

Bottom line we are enjoying Essaouira so far. Most of our days involve a leisurely prepared breakfast on our rooftop terrace, much reading, and a sunset walk after dinner of 2-3 miles. Life is tough.

~ Brian