Ryad Mogador Essaouira

... in that bitty "Title" box that travelpod offers. Thus... my "OMG...Ack!" above.

Whatever. What no doubt you're far more interested in is - whattheheck I've been up to this past week, yes?

Many, many adventures. A dizzying array of sights, sounds, people, experiences.

But perhaps I best rewind here and post a bit at the earlier dates at each location in Morocco.

Stay tuned...

... 40 years I’m talking about, 40 years I tell you - of not eating fish and somehow it was washed away in an instant – no idea why, but I just pick it up and start eating it. Before I know it Yassir has then placed a sardine in front of me and I just start eating it – next a prawn and I honestly thought that would be where it ended, but no, I pick it up, shell it and down it goes!!! Before I know it I’m chomping away on all of it – several prawns ...

... friend, which we all have a good laugh about.

It’s actually a lot cooler by the coast – it’s quite windy here, so we go shopping to get something a bit warmer to wear tonight. By the time we’ve done that, we go back to the riad, get changed and go out again.

We go to the restaurant where we are greeted by the head of the family and are told "please come in and sit down, you are very, very welcome". The whole family is in ...

At 7 A.M. we already left the hotel to move north to the ancient port town Essaouira. It was a Pirate port and has a lot of history to tell and to show us.

The trip was much more dangerously now. The Serpentine is so scary, and the driver of the bus drives like a mad man, but of course, he's just very experienced, but sitting near the window made some people almost sick. The road took ...

Hotel Palais Le'Heure Bleue







Imagine waking up to the sun peeking in through your suite window.

Just enough to summon you to the balcony to take in the marvelous views of Morrocco
.


The sea, the port and the towns that await you...


This could be the start of your day when you stay at the Heure Bleue Palais
.


Located in ...

Breakfast was surprisingly wonderful in my little hotel along the road, I got a very nice French Crepe, a thin crispy pancake, and a fruit salad. The bus to my next destination Essaouira left at 8 am but I didn't want to spoil the day with the sound of an alarm clock. I was sure there would be some other possibility to get there, and I was right. It was the time of some mutton-eating festival in ...

... at around 6.30pm. Wandered down to Place Jamaa el Fna which is a large square that has food stalls and entertainers like musicians and fortune tellers. The initial sight of all the food stalls lit up, mixed with the sight and smell of the smoke from the food cooking, and the sheer number of people milling around was absolutely mind blowing. Will take a picture tomorrow night - when I'm not standing and gaping :)

... entertaining myself with Arabic classes. I had the first one today. Four hours of Moroccan Arabic in one day, an intense load by any reckoning. It's a fascinating language, though. There's no conjugation of "to be" in the present tense, which really blows my mind. There are rules, of course, and it all seems fairly regular at this point. But I know that I'm only scratching the surface. What have I been doing other than ...

... and the cats go silent - I figure they have been either fed or strangled! Not that I particularly care - I just hope that tomorrow Pierpaolo will be back on form as I don't know what to do if he gets any worse, and I want him to enjoy this part of the 2 wheeled adventure. >>>> Wake up early to a chill in the air and the roar of 3 tiny cats meowing through what sounds to be a Led Zeppelinisque stack of Marshall Amps, so I guess they survived at the hands of Oubana last ...

... thing in the morning, we jumped into another taxi and we went to Agadir, only to jump into another taxi as we were going to Essaouira. Essaouira being an important town on the hippie trail as Jimi Hendrix had stayed here and it was the premier place to surf. Not that I was going to do any, it was way to cold and there were no waves to report about anyway, so we walked the souq and ended up buying a load of wooden goods. The place was nice, but a ...