Description: To me the Medina is Essaouira's main attraction, although you could walk from one side to the other in perhaps 15 minutes and a three hour wander gave us the measure of the place. Still I loved exploring and losing myself in the narrow streets of the Medina knowing that actually if I carried straight on for a while then I'd hit the city wall and could then walk round to one of the historic gates and re orientate myself. It’s both slightly scary but very safe.
The Medina is exactly what you might think it is, a maze of streets of varying width, full of shops and little street vendor restaurants. The locals are pretty friendly and happily shout out "closed" if you are walking down a non descript dead end. Some of these places were good for photos of old-as-the-hills paint peeling doors and window shutters, so sometimes I found it enjoyable just to wander along the backstreets of the Medina. It all felt very safe although I’m not one to flash my cash and have my camera on display just in case.
There is good shopping in Essaouira and with a town famed for its artists a chance to pick up something a little different, particularly in the streets around the Ramparts near to the sea front. Other than that, the standard fare is on offer including leather goods, good Moroccan music CD's, rugs, gold and other jewellery and T-Shirts and other knick knacks.
I always find haggling rather difficult because I'm just too polite, but in Essaouira the process is light hearted, although I still only enquired after the price of items I really wanted to avoid having a vendor chasing me down the street for ever after. One tip that some salesmen have cottoned onto is to ensure you pay only about half the original price quoted - offer a quarter and work upwards. Of course, only do that if you think the mid way price is a fair one.
During the day, I found the Essaouira Medina to be a fairly sedate place with some of the blue and white painted stalls closed and mainly the tourist shops were open. At night, there is an additional buzz with the local restaurants open selling fried fish and such like and street vendors jostling for the best places to sell their wares.
As well as local restaurants, there are some Western standard restaurants with gardens or open air rooftop areas with which you can watch the world go by with a slightly detached air. Obviously you can buy alcohol at many of these places, but I think staggering through the narrow streets dead drunk would be highly frowned upon. We limited ourselves to a couple of beers and then had a glass of wine or two back in our Riad if we wanted more.
The Medina area was largely pretty clean although there were a few mucky corners to remind you that you weren't in well heeled Europe; likewise the regular calls for prayer reminded us that we were "far from home".
We were in Essaouira for three nights, which in truth was probably one night too many as we aren't beach or sea people, and so most of our wandering was restricted to the Medina area.
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