Just three to four years ago Marrakech airport had one terminal. Now it has a fabulous main terminal building which dwarfs the original.

And now there’s a tender out for the construction of a third one – along with a second terminal at Fez!

Apparently by 2013 Marrakech will be able to handle 10 million passengers a year – more than double its current capacity.

Of course if you’re heading to Essaouira you can also use Agadir – or our local airport…still waiting for routes other than Paris/Casablanca!

Dar 91 is available between 2 and 10 September, and Next Door is available between 13 and 22 September.

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!