Essaouira

Bonjour,

Last Wednesday, Anna, Tommy and I traveled to Essaouira, a lovely coastal city about a seven-hour drive south of Rabat. The three of us were selected to participate as extras in a movie, Hanna (in theaters in 2011!), which stars Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana. They were filming the movie just outside of the city, at a Moroccan campsite that was supposed to be somewhere in southern Spain. You'll be hearing a lot more about that experience from Anna, so I'll limit this post to giving you a glimpse of Essaouira.

After a hot and dusty drive via Marrakech, we arrived on Wednesday night just in time to see the fog roll in off the windy sea and feel the temperatures plummet. Anna and I made a quick trip into the medina, where we bought a large, hot crepe filled with warm Nutella.


This gives you a sense of the Essaouira medina (fyi, I can't claim credit for all the medina photos in this post. Some of the better ones were taken by a friend).


Wonder what kind of music you can buy here...?


Or what might be for dinner here...?


Apart from the quick trip to the medina on Wednesday evening, we had very little time to see Essaouira until after we finished with the movie (after a 14-hour day on Thursday). So Anna, Tommy and I stayed an extra night and didn't return with the rest of the group on Friday morning. Instead, we moved to a charming riad in the medina, with great views from the rooftop.


Since the kids, especially, were pretty wiped out from the long day on Thursday, we played it pretty cool on Friday: After a slow morning, we went to a fabulous beach-side restaurant for lunch, visited the very windy beach (briefly),

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then relaxed in our room at the riad before joining a friendly family from England for dinner, Alan, Carla and Laura. Anna and Tommy had a great time hanging out with Laura, with whom they played a fairly hysterical game of jenga that night and had breakfast on the rooftop terrace the next morning.



After some power shopping (power buying) the next morning, the three of us headed to the bus station -- while checking out the street soccer en route -- for the long combined bus/train ride back to Rabat.

A bientot,

Kim