travel to morocco

Visiting Essaouira Morocco, Medina, Souk, and the beach!

Hey traveling guys and girls, are you looking for information on the old town in Essaouira, Morocco? Theres a souk inside the old city walls as well as a town, and rustic fishing port and village here as well as a wide sandy beach. This quiet small town definitely has its charms as a vacation spot and ill tell you why soon. If you want to know a bit more about who I am, I am a semi-professional travel writer, photographer, and full-time traveler from the USA. you can see more about my adventure on my About page. Nice to meet you!

barren desert near Essaouira morocco
Looking pretty barren out here in Morocco

Now on to Essaouira, Morocco. There are two buses which run from Marrakech to Essaouira, they are CTM and Supra Tours. The fare is $7 to $12 us. Both are professional lines that are used to dealing with tons of western tourists mostly from France. Each line runs multiple times from Marrakech to other cities, and to the coast multiple times a day. Just to add a bit more color on where and when I was here, I flew from Marrakech to London on April 27th, its now May 14th, 2022. I took a bus from Marrakech to Essaouira on April 7th, where i booked a small boutique hotel room towards the back of the souk and stayed there for awhile. if i had to choose which bus line id have to go with CTM for the onboard wifi.

Now in Essaouira there are several things that you can do there. One is shopping for artwork and rugs at the various craftsmans shops in the souk. I personally didn’t have any room in my one bag, but these are definitely worth checking out and at least taking a few photos or window shopping.

Your second choice is to do wind surfing or kite surfing at some of the local schools near the beach. Sometimes you can live in a hostel near the schools. Heres the main beach on my Youtube Channel, pretty barren isnt it? its nice and flat, the water is clean as well, along the back of the beach there are some restaurants where you can sit and watch the water. I sat at a place called Finatic near the center everyday, and guess what they do serve beer during Ramadan as long as you have your passport; more on this later. The staff is very polite and professional.

Essaouira, Morocco, riding horses. A 3rd choice that you have for your activities in Essaouira is to ride horses or camels on the beach. As you can see i love horses! make sure to talk down the owner to a lower price, i ended up paying $5 for 20 minutes just for a quick ride on an Arabian.

This concludes our tour of Essaouira its pretty small and you should only need a few days to cover it, unless you want to spend more time relaxing, as a final treat, here’s my tour of the northern end of the city, which dead ends on a deserted beach on Youtube. Thanks for watching.

Tips for budget travel to Marrakech, Morocco

Hey traveling guys and gals! i just went on a tour of Marrakech, Morocco and now i want to share with you some tips about living here if you stay while in this exciting city! At the center of the town there is a place called Jamaa El Fna Square, it is a very famous market square and the center of the old city. Here you will find a lot of windy roads and walkways. Around this area is also another area called Medina which means center. Another place is called Kasbah which means castle. Kasbah has some youth hostels located inside, so as a budget traveler, you may want to consider these.

Another neighborhood which is a newer neighborhood is called Gueliz. if i were you, i may choose to spend a few nights in the center near one of these areas, but be aware of a few things that go on in the center, there are a lot of peddlers, and beggars, some salesman who are selling some good things and also trinkets for tourists. I would use a bit of caution here, but its also an exciting area with tons to see. You may also want to move to Gueliz or another area outside of town called Amerchich. The area that is several miles north of town is also very nice with a lot of new buildings. it would depend on what type of accommodation that you prefer.

Things to do: there are many guided tours discussing the history and the castle and the city. You can also take a paid camel ride or a paid horse carriage ride for about 150 Dirham for 1 hours time. Another amazing thing to check out is the rug dying factory and shops. they make incredible rugs, spices and other crafts in Marrakech. Finally you can also take a trip into the desert. They have some day trips arranged by van to surrounding areas. If you want to do some shopping there are some typical western stores located in Gueliz at the mall, there are two malls here, one of them is called Marrakech Menara mall. There is also a shopping center with stores like Decathlon about 4 miles north of the city. If you would like to buy souvenirs i recommend that you visit the main square and take the far left pathway to see some amazing craftsI enjoy and use caution with the locals! This is me in Marrakech.