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We're back in Marrakech for the night after 3 days in Essaouira, a town on the Atlantic coast famous for its wind-surfing.Our first night was not so good - we arrived in the evening after a 3 hour coach ride to find it was cloudy, very windy and almost cold, a bit of a shock after Marrakech. We found a cheap room in the old city about 10 pounds for a room with en suite, a seating area with chairs and sofas and a loft bed up a flight of stairs, but failed to notice until we'd paid and started to unpack that it was hideously damp, and not just the walls, but the sofas and the bed as well.
We went for a walk around the Medina and down to the beach, and everything was crumbling and seemed dirty and generally depressing after the colour and bustle of Marrakech. All the buildings have peeling paint and look almost derelict, and the whole town smelt of damp and fish. We went for dinner to get warm but the (very posh) restaurant felt damp as well - we both felt as though the damp was seeping through our skin into our bones, it was horrible. However on the up-side I did get my first cup of English tea in 3 days... I asked for milk, as drinking it black is not the English way (I can do everything else the Moroccan way, but English tea should never be messed with!), and the waiter looked faintly horrified but agreed. Then we saw him leave the restaurant and return with a carton of milk which he had gone to the Tabac to buy! Ahaha. I loved it - we left a big tip!
Sadly Marc got food poisoning from his chicken tagine, and we spent a horrible night in the damp bed, with t-shirts over the cushions we were supposed to use as pillows and fully dressed including, in Marc's case, socks, cos everything was grimey and we didn't want to touch it!
By the morning we were seriously considering just packing up and leaving, but thank god we didn't. We decided to pay a bit more for a Lonely Planet recommended hotel, and found a beautiful, spotlessly clean central hotel with lovely tiled bathroom, a big bedroom and a hot shower.
Essaouira is actually lovely, and once the sun had come back and and we explored it by day we saw that it is charmingly decayed, rather than derelict, and the narrow streets and faded paintwork are rather picturesque.
Not much to do, as in most seaside towns, except laze on the beach and swim in the sea, which is freezing because of the constant wind - and because it is the Atlantic Ocean I guess, but it was a nice break, and we enjoyed running along the beach in the waves to watch the wind-surfers, and discovered something new and exciting: kite surfing!
It looks like the best sport ever, I wanted to try it so mcuh, but sadly it costs over 150 quid for 10 hours of tuition. Not really within my budget for this trip, but definately a new and high priority on the list of Things To Do Before I Die. I can hardly wait, watching the real experts jumping into the air for such a long time made me want to just chuck a credit card at someone and run straight into the sea... All I can say is thank the lord I do not have a credit card, and I am already thinking about saving for a kite-surfing trip!
All in all the first night apart we had a wonderful time, and found a little restaurant in the Medina where I had one of the best meals of my life: Moroccan vegetable soup followed by a heavenly fish tagine, which I would happily eat every night if I could. The food really is amazing - maybe I should do a cookery course while learning to kite-surf!

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