Essaouira Trip

After leaving Marrakesh, we took the two hour drive to Essaouria, which was a refreshingly brisk change! Cooler than Rabat, even. We are right nearby the ocean too.

The hotel here was very nice too, and we finally had internet in our rooms!

I took the bus with the others to the downtown medina so that I could eat. I got with a group who took forever to decide that they actually wanted to eat, but when we did, we went to this really nice terrace restaurant. Unfortunately it was dark out at this point so there wasn't the opportunity to get some good pictures in. I had harrira soup again, which they forgot to bring out, so that was awkward. But that soup is damned good. 

We didn't have any scheduled activities for this night, so after dinner I took a taxi with my roommate back to the hotel and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and had breafast, which I thought I was late too. Turns out I forgot that they set the time back an hour because of Ramadan, so I had an extra hour to go back to bed to nap :)

Took the bus back to the medina and had a few hours to walk around and get some good deals. 

People there were very pushy and it got awkward, but I found some really awesome ice cream and went to explore on the docks before I bought all my things. 

It was really beautiful, and windy which was great cause walking around was getting a bit hot. I think they filmed Game of Thrones here too. 

So I went shopping in the medina for a while too. Scored some good deals on wood products, which is the big thing in Essaouria. There were lots of kitty cats too! 

After that, we were supposed to be able to have until 3 to shop, but I get a call from my director at 2:10 saying that the bus is leaving and everyone is waiting on me. I wasn't around when she made her announcement and it was never followed up with text or other forms of communication. It was stupid. So I ran back to the bus with all my purchases and got ready for the five hour ride back to Rabat. 

Turns out there was some accident or something on the highway and they were closing down lanes in the highway and our bus had picked a lane that was closed, but then our approach was bad and we had to back up a couple of times. We were stuck in traffic for a few hours. Didn't make it back home until nearly ten, and my ipod stopped working with at least three hours left to go!