Agadir, Morocco

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Monday 14th December, 2015. Agadir, Morocco

We were awoken early by the roaring sound of the ship's bow thrusters and generators as we docked at the container port just outside of the holiday destination of Agadir in Morocco.

The city of Agadir together with the neighbouring citiesof Inezagane and Ait Melloul was estimated in 2013to have 609,088 inhabitants. Agadir is oneof the major urban centres of Morocco, the 7th largest conurbation in the country. Three languages are spoken in the city: Tashelhit, Morocan Arabic and French. The entire city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960 and since then the city has been rebuilt with earthquake proof buildings. It is now the largest seaside resort in Morocco where tourists and residents are attracted by a year roundmild climate. It is a major "winter sun" destination for Northern Europeans - particularly the French.

After breakfast we purchased our shuttle bus tickets and collected our boarding passes. We were dumped off in a large car park next to the beach. It was very windy but the beach was impressive (and deserted). There was miles and miles of golden sands being lapped by the Atlantic Ocean waves. It was very clean and modern. We were hounded by locals trying to sell us everything from minerals to leather goods and clothing. M purchased the mandatory FM from a beachfront souvenir shop. We found the Mc D's and M checked the emails. Then we strolled along the beach front promenade until we found the Tafoukt Souk. This was full of stalls selling all aray of things but the leather goods were particularly nice. We didn't buy anything though as we are really on the weight limit for the return home. We made our way back to the carpark with the intention of returning to the ship to get the laptop to use at Mc D's to post the blogs of our trip so far. We had a quick beer and caught the next shuttle back to the beach. This had to be aborted though as the TravelBlog website was either not working or Mc D's had too many users on its network. We gave up and returned to the ship for lunch. After lunch we purchased some ship internet and tried to post again- unsuccessfully.

We went to the quiz in the afternoon and then had a siesta in the cabin before dinner. On the way to pre-dinner drinks we met up with Tony and Sheila who informed us that M and Sheila had come joint first in the Bridge yesterday. Everyone was present for dinner and the show was a trip of song and dance from around Europe which was great.

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