Asilah!

Bonjour,

We (the KBATS, plus Karla, Gary and Grace) trained it to Asilah on Wednesday.

In my opinion, Asilah rivals Chefchaouen and Essaouira for the title of most charming small city in Morocco.

For one thing, it has the cleanest medina I've ever seen. The medina was the cleanest place in the city (not the usual state of affairs).

There are also lots of places to buy contemporary art, since Asilah is a haven for Moroccan (and other) artists.

And in the medina, many of the walls are covered with funky murals, presumably painted by many of those artists.

Asilah has the added advantage of being located right next to the sea, and the light is beautiful, particularly in the evening (yes, I'll be posting more photos of spectacular sunsets soon).

Here's the view from the roof terrace of the house we rented in the medina.

On Thursday morning, several of us headed to the weekly local market, which is not designed for tourists but for real residents. Our choice for transportation? A horse-drawn, wooden cart.

It seemed like a good, fun idea at the time.

Here's Anna taking the reins on our ride.

And here's Gracie checking out the view from the cart and her daddy's lap.

Turns out that taking the cart was not such a great decision, something we realized first when the horse began to gallop up a street paved with broken asphalt (we had the driver slow down so that Gary and Gracie didn't bounce right off the back), then again, when our driver turned out onto the highway and cars and trucks pulled up close before swerving around to pass us, (it's hard to get a good photo of that when you are doing all you can just to hang on), and then again, when my lower back let its presence be known when I got off the cart.

We took a regular taxi home.

But before we did, Gracie got to visit her first Thursday market in Morocco.

And while there, we had time to buy fresh olive oil, several kinds of delicious olives, about 4 lbs of tomatoes, 2 lbs of onions, and two bunches of scallions, all for about $5.

The next day, we were off to Paradise beach... well, at least we thought we were.

A bientot,