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Published: October 18th 2008
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I love Essouira! This was our first real chance in 2 weeks to see the coastline and soak up the gorgeous sun. When we arrived in Essouira our tour guide took us for a quick walk to get to know the basic layout of the village. I can not describe to you how difficult it was to walk past sooooooo many interesting shops and not go inside. I felt like a bubble waiting to burst! Every street is lined with shop after shop and food after food. I was overcome with excitement at the thought of spending money....... and boy! I didn't waste any time. I bought loads and loads of gorgeous jewelery and spent the rest of the evening walking around and planning my next days purchases. Another great thing about Essouira was that RAMADAAN was OVER! The streets were constantly busy and filled with people eating and drinking to their hearts content. The first evening ended with a great tagine and some sheesha. I was certainly beginning to feel closer to home! ( not that I cook tagines and smoke sheesha but...... the shopping!)
The following morning I was most disappointed to learn that we were booked into
a guided tour of the area for the simple reason that I was all pumped to hit the shops. But this ended up been an interesting walk that took us to the towns main source of revenue; the Fish markets. It was a beautiful sight to see all the boats lined up. As it was a public holiday in Morrocco to mark the end on Ramadaan none of the fisherman were around. One thing that was around were CATS! Cats, cats, cats........ Everywhere you go, everytime you eat there they are. This became a major problem for me because I can not stand the sneaky suckers. I could not enjoy a meal without the vermont crashing the party. I felt bad for the rest of my tour group because they quickly learned how much I hated cats and were constantly on the look out and shooing them away for me errrrrrrrrr!!!!! Just writing about this now makes me feel disgusting.
Anyway, back to the tour. So the guide took us through every nook and cranny of the Medina and then to a silver co-op shop. A co-op silver shop is a communal jewelery shop that locals bring the jewelery
they have designed to. It must silver and it must be stamped. The good thing about this is that you know you are getting the real deal because soooo many shops try to sell you the fake stuff but the bad thing is it can be expensive! But needless to say I bought .......... just a few items. As we walked to this shop Sheronika and I happened to notice these gorgeous bags sitting outside a doorway. The two of us stopped and looked as though we had just seen the man (or should I say bag) of our dreams! We took one look at each other and said, we'll catch up with the group and quickly ran through the door. We had discovered a gold mine. Bags as far as the eye could see. Red ones, leather ones, beaded, feathers, big and small, you name they had it. There would be no doubt that before we left Essouira we would also have a bag in our posession! We quickly ran back to the group but not before we vowed to return and with determination ensured the shop assistant we would be back!
After our tour 3 of us
headed back to fish market for lunch. Basically you choose which store you will eat at. Select your fresh fish incooked. The guy weighs it and gives you a price then they cook it. We had prawns, calamari and a whole large fish for $10. It was sooooo good that we went back the next day with some extra friends. As I was walking back from lunch I came across a tiny shop with leather sandals hanging in every inch of the room. It was clear that each shoe had been hand cut and stitched with unique style. Inside amongst the leather was a little old man reading the newspaper. I began searching through the shoes looking and trying lots of styles. The little man refused to acknowledge my existence and was beginning to get annoyed. I tried to speak to him about the different colours, even in berber language but he just pretended that I was not there. Finally I picked the shoe I wanted and held up the cash. He stood up with a big smile and began to thank me and search for the shoes partner. He was suddenly very nice! Man! Money can get you far.
I would have liked to stay in Essouira for a bit longer but it was time for us to head to our final stop- Marrakech. Mind you, I did not leave until I purchased 3 of those bags from that gorgeous french bag designer.
It was late in the afternoon when the group jumped on a coach and headed to Marrakech. Can I say these morroccon drivers are crazy. I saw my life flash before my eyes more than once on this drive. Morroccon drivers are constantly in a hurry, always overtaking and speeding past 4 or 5 cars at a time. I spent more time looking at on coming traffic than the back of cars as it should be.
Well, within no time we made it to Marrakech and Kazza took us to the town square to eat. Wow! wow! wow! This square is happening. Street performers, monkeys, snakes, food stalls and shops everywhere. We te at one of the stalls an Kazza was telling me that the stalls are set up at 4pm till 3 am in the morning then they have to take the stalls down during the day and return to set up
again in the afternoon. Can you imagine having to do that everyday. No way! The food is cheap and the taste is amazing. A few of us hung around after dinner to watch the street performers but this was short lived because we were hassled by lots of young men and began to feel uncomfortable with their disgusting antics. In Marrakech they actually have tourism police. Because alot of morroccon men really give tourists a hard time they are on guard to move the men on and keep us safe.
So we headed back to the hotel in a horse drawn carraige which kinda made up for our experience with the rude dudes in the square. When we returned to the square Kazza took us out for sheesha.
I spent the following day shopping even though I must admit I was getting over my shopping craze again. There is lots of beautiful jewellery and leather in Morrocco and if I really wanted to I could go crazy. You get a bit sick of having to wheel and deal. I also jumped on one of those double decker buses called the hop on, hop off. It was really great to
sit in the sun for a couple of hours and see what the city had to offer.
In the evening we had our final group dinner and afterwards we headed to one of the many nightclubs. It was very interesting to see the setup considering nightclubs in Marrakech compared to Sydney. It wasn't until the following day that I was informed that men go to night clubs in Morrocco to mainly pick up prostitutes. The women at the club were dressed very modernly and skimpy. I can't believe I spent the evening dancing with prostitutes and sleezy guys. I was wondering why I was popular that night. Actually I shouldn't be writing about this cause I make myself out to sound like I looked like a prostitute...... which I didnt!!!!...... anyway I have ti quite this story cause it isn't coming out right and I think I'm just digging my own grave! As we left the club and began to walk back to the hotel we were inundated by guys pulling up in cars and offering us lifts home. It was pretty scary. But luckily the tourist police cwme along and the guys drove off like a cat with its tail between its legs. I really hate those pesky creatures!
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