We have space in our new apartment, Next Door @ Dar 91, between 15 and 22 September…and we’re offering 15% discount if you book for a week or more! We also have space in October.
Check out the coolest new address in Essaouira: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Essaouira/Dar-91-Essaouira/138803832582?v=photos
…where will it end, we ask ourselves?
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!
Book for at least a week in September and we’ll give you 15% off! Or shorter stays (3 night minimum) available with 10% discount.
Dar 91 is available between 2 and 10 September, and Next Door is available between 13 and 22 September.
As in all the best photo-shoots, it’s the stuff that’s NOT in shot that’s the most revealing…but for now, sit back and enjoy some bits of the new place that we CAN show you!
Click here to see the photo album on our Facebook page – ‘like’ the main page there and you’ll get to see new photo albums as we add them…eventually we suppose we’ll get to the point where there isn’t a building site behind the photographer!
One of the joys of renovating in Morocco is the abundance of coloured glass. We are particularly loving the deep green and rich yellow of these windows, which we found at the junk market and have brought back to life…
Yes indeed, we’re at the point where we can start to show you the charming little details that will hopefully make the new flat a thing of beauty. We’re loving these antique tiles salvaged from a riad on Rue d’Agadir, set into mosaic in the 2nd floor kitchen…
One of the most time-consuming (and expensive) aspects of renovating a house in the medina is clearing away all the rubble you create. It all has to be bagged up into little sacks and left on the street overnight, for a horse and cart to take away first thing in the morning.
We’ve produced hundreds of cartloads since starting our renovation…hopefully not too many to go now!!
When your house is built onto the battlements of a walled city, you don’t really expect your walls to contain a blocked-off doorway that might at some point have ushered you straight out of the city wall.
But that’s exactly what we found on the ground floor of Dar 91, as shown in this rather grainy photo (You’re just going to have to trust us on this one…it’s pretty dark down there and we didn’t have a lighting crew with us, ok? Ed). Which suggests our house pre-dates the city wall – or that our house was built where there used to be a door into the medina (which seems unlikely).
Kind of annoying, too – could make a rather natty shortcut to the off licence…
In the ‘old days’ there was apparently a tradition of families having stashed treasure in Moroccan houses as they fled from unfriendly regimes…so the builders get very excited when they find interesting things amongst the rubble.
We’re not sure the large iron balls the builders found under the floor are worth a lot, but they’re certainly an interesting find and did get them quite excited for a few moments.
Could they be cannonballs? The ends of weightlifting bars? Any other ideas?
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.
