Essaouira
Morocco, 2018
Woke up at 12 local time. Wow, we slept for 12 hours — we were completely exhausted.
Having breakfast with local peaches, nectarines, and yellow plums. All the fruit is delicious, especially the plums :)
Our living room
We’re going to stroll around the city. Before reaching the center, we park and continue on foot.
The old city in Morocco is called the medina. There are narrow streets and no cars.
It’s great in the medina; for some reason, it’s not hot at all. They sell all sorts of things there — dates, leather goods, painted plates.
Wolf examining the plates
It smells of the ocean, fish, spices, and some kind of food. In general, Morocco is not even close to India. It doesn’t smell bad here at all, and it’s almost not dirty. Moroccans are not pushy at all. You can calmly walk up to any stall and look at the goods. The seller will politely greet you in French (“Bonjour, madame”) and wait patiently. Cats are lying everywhere. We wander aimlessly through the streets. It’s perfectly fine to get around here; there aren’t many people. (In India, you usually have to push your way through a crowd of people)
A little street in the medina, houses mostly white in color
Another little street
We reach the fort. The ocean is visible from the walls. There is a strong wind here. Seagulls soar in the sky.
Ocean
Square in front of the port
There are many little cafés in the medina, but the prices are not low. Shawarma, for example, even not in a café but just on its own, costs 75 UAH, tea 30 UAH. Volchiy remembers how in Sri Lanka we would go into any local café, order tea and buns, and not even ask how much it cost — because it was always cheap. Morocco is not Asia.
We decided to try a local flatbread called harcha (at home I read that it is made with semolina). It turned out to be very tasty!
Semolina Flatbread
We head home for lunch. On the way, we stop at Carrefour. We decide to give Moroccan wine one last chance. We buy more olives and flip-flops. We forgot to bring ours, and without flip-flops it’s not good here.
The latest Moroccan wine turned out better than yesterday’s, but still not very good, just barely drinkable... On the other hand, we gorge ourselves on olives and peaches.
