Dar 91 Essaouira Blog - Luxury guest house holiday accommodation for rent Essaouira » medina

Some more views inside

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:33:24 +0000

To get to the new house, you walk down a corridor to the left of Dar 91 and then up some steps to the first floor, where you find a two-room flat with a tiny understairs kitchen and windows over the city wall.

Further up lie two more flats, each with two rooms – and then the stairs wind on, finally reaching the 4th floor roof terrace, with views to the sea and across Essaouira’s old and new towns. All three flats cluster around the ‘mrah’ or central riad hole, although the previous residents had blocked this off with plastic and chipboard so as to create some privacy.

It seems unbelievable that this house, which now lies empty and has become so familiar to us, was so recently home to no fewer than 21 people. On our early visits our memories of its labyrinthine layout were so transitory that we thought we’d never make sense of it!

Our new house in Essaouira!

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:14:44 +0000

Yes folks we’ve taken the plunge and bought the house behind (and under) Dar 91. To do so meant buying three separate properties – an experience that has been…well, let’s just say “a challenge” (one day we’ll write a book about that).

So anyway, now we’ve signed the final piece of paper and are the proud owners…apparently.

Over the next few months, you’ll be able to follow our progress on this blog as we renovate the new place. As you’ll see from the pictures below, we have a little bit of work to do…

Essaouira a century ago

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:12:39 +0000

‘Called by the Moors “Es Soueira” (The Little Picture), I could never understand why, until on a certain day in June some years ago, I had been staying at a Moor’s house a little way up country and was returning to the city. I reached the heights which overlook the sand dunes soon after sunrise, and I saw “The Picture”…

‘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).