One of the joys of our neighbourhood is waking up to find that the normally white terraces are an explosion of colour, thanks to the local blanket cleaning rituals. As you’ll see from the montage below, traditional Moroccan blankets now compete with modern, garish and synthetic alternatives. Having slept in a few of these, we can assure readers that what they may lack in style, they more than make up for in heat retention.

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This set of doors, a beautiful example of Berber design, was found in the hills outside Taroudant in the south of Morocco.

The Berbers’ design vocabulary includes magic numbers, magic squares, verses from the Koran, Arabic script, geometric shapes (triangles, squares, crosses, eight-pointed stars, six-pointed stars, spirals, circles and diamonds), as well as motifs representing plants, flowers, humans, eyes and hands.  Berber designs are often valued for the ‘baraka’  (spiritual power) they contain…and we reckon these have bucketloads of the stuff

We’ve just collected our first batch (or rather, our friend did…see above!) and it’s the most delicious, heavy honey we’ve ever tasted…with a dark colour and a bitter ‘finish’ arising from the bees’ proximity to an olive grove.

Check out these honeycombs (and by the way, lying in a hot field sucking honey straight from the comb is the definition of luxury)…

…a big future climbing argan trees awaits this baby

For more photos of this year’s latest in poultry fashion – and some beautiful shots of the Moroccan countryside – see our newly updated Flickr pages at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/essaouiraphotos/.

Please note: no chicks were harmed during this photo shoot; they are all now living happily in the countryside. Happy Easter!

Moroccan tea is made from Chinese gunpowder green tea, along with vast quantities of sugar, mint leaves and, depending on the season, location and personal preference, all manner of additional ingredients – like lemon verbena, orange blossom, cinnamon or even wormwood. Here’s a recipe for the basic version, should you wish to experiment before or after your visit:

Rinse your teapot with boiling water, add 2 teaspoons of Chinese gunpowder green tea and a little boiling water. Swirl it briefly then drain the water to remove any tea dust. Half fill the pot with boiling water. Crush sprigs of spearmint in your hand and add to the pot until it’s nearly three-quarters full. Add 2 tablespoons of white sugar and fill the pot with boiling water. Let brew for 3 minutes. Pour out a glass of tea and pour it back into the pot. Repeat this twice, to mix the tea and dissolve the sugar. Then pour from a height, to aerate the tea.

Enjoy!

‘The sky was a brilliant and cloudless blue, and so was the sea. And the two blended into one with the aid of the morning mist; whilst the soft yellow of the sands faded into the blue in such a way that I seemed to be gazing upon a fairy palace, a picturesque commingling of dazzling white roofs and turrets suspended in the air. It was a picture indeed and more: a dream picture, too good to be true…

‘The town is clean and healthy, excellent fishing may be had, and an abundance of fowl-shooting. There are plenty of little excursions to be made in the neighbourhood, and it is an easy matter to organise boar hunts in the Argan forest, whilst the hard sands are ideal for a morning gallop…

‘Altogether Mogador should appeal to the English tourist who wants something a little less hackneyed than are most European watering places.’

Taken from Ward, H (1907) Mysterious Morocco And How To Appreciate It, published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co (London).