Port d'Essaouire

This morning we got up early and made our way over to the Marrakech Railway Station (Gare de Marrakech) to get the Supratours bus to Essaouira on the coast of Morocco. Although the station is a modern building, I love the architecture. Trains mainly run in the northern direction to Casablanca, Rabat, Fez and Tangier. We had a delicious Moroccan breakfast in the station before catching the bus.

The Medina of Essaouira was formerly called Mogador and is an exceptional example of a late-18th-century fortified town, built according to the principles of contemporary European military architecture in a North African context. Since its foundation, it has been a major international trading seaport, linking Morocco and its Saharan hinterland with Europe and the rest of the world.

Essaouira is definitely more laid back than Marrakech and you don't get harangued at every turn.

We spent the morning walking on the beautiful white beach watching the kite-surfers and then we had lunch in one of the wooden shacks by the harbour. We had a totally amazing lunch of langoustines, sea bass, calamari and lobster.

We then explored the Medina and then back to the harbour. The harbour was definitely the highlight for me, as you see some of the real life of Morocco. It is a busy working fishing port and it was great to see the locals repairing their boats, mending nets, gutting fish, buying and selling all sorts of seafood, with the speciality being sardines.

I could spend days in the port, it is definitely a photographers Mecca.