Our hotel in Essaouira is Dar Qdima Riad. It's an awesome little place spread over two floors and a terrace above. No lifts here so you have to lug your luggage up the very narrow spiralling staircase. It definitely fits in with the Bohemian feel of Essaouira. The rooms have terracotta plastered walls, with a distinct Gaudio look to the design. Broken tiles, uneven angles and arches all part of the deign - very funky and fun.
After breakfast at 8:00 we met up with Hussain, a local tour guide, for a two and a half hour walking tour of the medina and the nearby waterfront.
Meaning "well designed", the city of Essaouira has been around for centuries and in its early days was a major trading port to Europe. In the early 20th century, under French protectorate, the towns name was changed to Mogador. It wasn't until Morocco gained their independence in 1956, that the name reverted back to the original Essaouira.
Our walk through the narrow alleyways, criss crosses the medina taking in some of the popular and some less popular tourist alleys. Like the rest of Morocco, cats and kittens are everywhere. Most of them look pretty mangey and look like they live on the streets - and that's because most of them do. We learn that Muslims consider cats to be dirty, so whilst they will happily feed them scraps of food, they are not allowed in the home. They consider them dirty because they will leave cat hair in the areas where they will pray.
Most shops don't open until around 10:00am, so when we walk the alleyways are relatively quiet. There are people out and about cleaning all the rubbish that was dumped on the ground from the previous day. Hussain reminded us a number of times to make sure we didn't walk in the middle of the lanes as most of the rubbish (including small shit deposits) is gathered there.
We walked down one alleyway which was home to all the herbal remedies. You can get all sorts of plants and roots to cure you of things like diarrhoea, allergies, fatigue, vertigo, stress, dents (whatever the hell dents is????) and many others. Also on offer was some sort of plant which was advertised as Viagra Femme and another Viagra Turbo+ (for the man in your life!!).
Then it was down to the impressive Spanish fortress which stretches for a couple of hundred metres, complete with canons at every third of fourth wall turret. There are three different canon designs, each inscribed for whoever was in power at the time. The majority were made for King Carlos III, with the name Carlos very cleverly designed with interwoven lettering on the canon top.
From their it was down to the fishing port which was crowded with fisherman, fish sellers, buyers, tourists and seagulls - bloody seagulls everywhere! There's a group of half a dozen men on the rocks near where the fish sellers are working. These men are scalers. Once the fish has been purchased by the seller, some of the fish goes to the scalers to scale and gut the fish. Everything they strip off and out of the fish is then discarded on the rocks for the seagulls to feast on. The seagulls just circle above the scalers and wait for them to throw some food their way and then pounce on it. They are definitely the most well fed seagulls I've ever seen!
Cindy decided to take a photo of one of the scalers who replied by giving her the finger. Apparently they want to be paid for having their photo taken. Never mind, loads of people make the same mistake and receive the same response.
Blue and white paintwork is definitely the theme of Essaouira. Just like pthe medina the same paint work appears on the buildings at the port and all the boats are also painted the same blue. Even the town taxis are painted blue.
The last stop on our tour was a visit to a silver jewellery manufacturing workshop and gallery. We hadn't intended on buying anything, but ended up buying a couple of things each. I bought a couple of things for my wrist and Cindy bought an amazing claddagh pendant and a beautiful silver chain to go with it. Everything is certified as genuine silver and really well priced.
The rest of the day we had to ourselves. First stop was lunch. A group of us headed to Place Moulay Hassan, the square near the port and settled into one of the many cafes. Food ordered it was nice to sit back and watch the comings and goings of the busy square. When Cindy's vegetarian pizza that she ordered arrived, it arrived with meatballs on top of it. We said to the waiter that she had ordered vegetarian to which the waiter replied "it's ok, it's the same - just eat". Needless to say, we didn't eat the vegetarian pizza and convinced our waiter that he should get what was ordered, which duly came out 10 minutes later.
As we found out there's a lot of answers like that - like buying shoes. If they don't fit, the answer will always be "no problem I have your size" and then they'll come out with exactly the same size and insist these are ok! Or if they don't have what you want there will always be a really good reason why what they have on offer is far superior to anything else.
Cindy and a few others decided they wanted to visit a Hammam (traditional bathhouse) for some beauty treatment. Me and Dane decided it was time to lose our facial hair and headed to one of the many barbers around the Medina.
I've haircut was a lot of fun. We spoke no Arabic and neither of the barbers spoke English, but we managed to explain what we needed - we both wanted a bit of a trim and we wanted to our facial hair cut off with cut-throats, no shavers for us rouged travellers!
I reckon my barber must watch Edward Scissor-Hands every night. His fingers were flying around my head and the blades of the scissors were moving so fast, I'm sure they were starting to glow! I was too afraid to move in case he cut my ear off! Dane and I started out all chatty and laughing, but quickly shut up as we became aware of the potential danger of talking while someone was whirring around with razor sharp scissors.
In no time at all my trim was complete, which turn pedi out to be a little bit more than a trim - as was Dane's. Then it was on to the shave which was equally efficient. The lathering process was pretty relaxing. This lasted a few minutes as my man ensured I was perfectly covered with the right amount of shaving foam.
Then out came the cut-throat and my man went to work. Twisting my head from left to right and squeezing my nose or pulling my chin up to make sure there was the right amount of stretch on my skin - he was all efficiency.
Once he had completed the job, out came the camel hair brush again and on went the shaving cream for round two. He followed the same process of twisting my head left and right, stretching the skin tight and squeezing my nose to make sure he got rid of anything he missed first time round.
I'm not sure I breathed through the whole process for fear of him slicing something rather important.
End result was that he did a pretty good job. The haircut looked ok, although when he shaved me he did miss a little bit under my lip. I decided not to mention it as he had nicked my skin once which drew a bit of blood. I figured there'd been enough blood spilt for one day!
After that I felt a beer was in order, so headed to the terraced Taros bar at the square. It was nice sitting and doing a bit of people watching and catching up on a bit of writing.
I met up with Cindy and the girls and it sounds like their two hour Hammam experience was well worth it. They all looked and sounded very relaxed indeed.
Away from the protection of the walls of the Medinas, Essaouira is very windy and has been surprisingly chilly in the evening. It's cold enough to make us put on sweatshirts or jackets when going out in the evenings.
So with jackets in hand we headed out to a nearby restaurant for dinner, after which a few of us headed to Taros for a night cap, which turned into a few night caps. Taros is a very trendy bar, popular with tourists and locals alike.
Here's a tip for any travellers when ordering a gin & tonic and you get asked if you want a double. If you say yes, you'll end up with a massive drink in a huge red wine goblet and you'll also pay twice the price. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I don't think Cindy thought it was bad at all!
We sat there for a couple of hours, chatting and listening to music before heading back to our hotel around 1:00am.
No comments:
Post a Comment