Essaouira

To finish off our grand Moroccan tour we ended at Essaouira (pronounced Ess-a-wee-ra) which is a beach town about 3 hours away from Marrakech.  We chose it over the other coastal resort towns because it also has an old town with a medina, which maintained some of the character of Morocco.  The town itself had lots of beautiful riads in town to choose from, but since we wanted to be able to relax in the sun, and since I had heard that the beach itself could be really windy we opted for this Dar about 15 km outside of town so that we could spend our days by the pool and let Luna play.  It was called Le Jardin des Duouars - and for good reason, the gardens were amazing.  There was only one other couple there the whole time we were there, so we practically had the place to ourselves, especially since it had two pools.  And because tourism was so slow, we also only paid 2/3 of the normal price!

Our room was in this villa.

And we had our own personal little lounge area outside our door.

One of the two pools, that's the "back door" to our suite, just beyond the edge of the infinity pool.

Still lots of cats...

Our "walk-in" tub... had steps to get down...

I loved these robes they had for us... they looked like caftans.

The sunken lounge in the main building... Luna thought it was quite fun!

We had all of our meals in the hotel on this terrace.

Some pictures from the gardens...

There were several of these cacti, they were huge!

And 3 or 4 lily ponds, all with frogs and turtles, to Luna's delight of course!

There goes a turtle!

This pond was always fun at meal time, Luna made a routine of looking for frogs with Papa...

There's a frog!

The beach at Essaouira...

We went in to Essaouira for shopping and dinners...

There was a distinct difference in the medina here... lots of blue wood trim, and always the blue sky promising the sea just beyond the walls...

More precarious stacks of spices...

Narrow alley, just inside the sea wall...

More cats of course!

Out on the main square...

View from the port back towards the city...

Local fisherman preparing their catch...

Fishing boats at the end of the day...

Kids playing football outside the city walls...

Back at the pool...

Lots of vacation homes and dars out in the hills...

Luna taking a bath!  She got a little lost in there!

We had to try one of the freshly caught fish stands...  places just outside the port which are set up to sell, and then cook for you, the catch of  the day...

Bas had sea bass, I had squid.

Luna discussing the crabs with another little boy...

Luna having a temper tantrum in the medina...

At this point she knew I thought it was funny...

Everybody loved her of course, you can see that on the faces of the ladies in the background...

Selling bunches of mint from a donkey cart... very important for every bodies mint tea!

Business was slow, this guy was taking a nap...

Luna's hair one night we went out for dinner...  can't believe I had two bobby pins to do this with!

On our last day, we hung out at the hotel pool until the afternoon (our flight wasn't until midnight in Casablanca) and then went to have lunch at this beach shack before hitting the road.  It was where all the surfers hung out...

You can practically see the sand in the air here... the camels have their backs to the wind...  glad we didn't count on the beach for sun!

And finally, a shot from our drive back up the coast to Casablanca... more trucks.  Only this time we have a livestock carrier... full of people and acting as the local bus service!  We passed several of these!!