Essaouira Charm

Arrived in Essaouira at midday. Again like Marrakech, entering this coastal city throws you out of your comfort zone.
The initial X-ray eyes that gaze over you and people competing for your attention with a friendly wave or playing "guess your nationality" by yelling out Brazil and India...At first this is overwhelming but you soon realize that's who they are and they are just trying to making a living. I was over this shock fairly quickly.

Soon after checking in we started wandering around this beachside Moroccan jewel. It was very windy when we arrived so we decided to explore the multiple alleyways and leave the beach for the following day.

We started off with a traditional Moroccan lunch close to the port. Then we slowly strolled along exploring the multiple stalls who sell everything from handmade crafts to Morrocan sweets to housewares and spices. As there are thousands of these little stalls I couldn't help but wonder how long does it take to set up the stalls and how would the alleyways look at night and whether it would be safe?

The picture above shows how the market looks like during the day and at the peak time during early evening to when the stalls shut down at night around 11pm. It's fair to say that the alleyways are left in a clean state and is very well lit at night which makes it safe. Although once these stalls and restaurants close there is literally no need to wander out anyways.

After exploring the stalls we all decided to go to a spa for a traditional massage. We arrived at 4.15pm and quickly got escorted to the changing rooms. The ladies barely spoke any English...surprisingly majority of Essaouira speaks French which I have limited knowledge of but managed to get around it fine until at this point. It was the first time in my life a lady told me to get changed into panties. I asked her with hesitation again "you want me to wear what?" She said panties twice. Then I was like umm ok...she then went and got the manger who explained it was underwear and if I could wear them and put on a robe.
Well the confusion didn't just end at panties. I asked for a deep tissue massage not the argon oil soft therapeutic one.
Throughout the session I asked the lady or tried to ask her to work bit deeper but she kept dousing me in argon oil and working on areas I wouldn't normally touch myself (don't worry no happy endings here). After an hour and a good shower later, I caught up with my friends over some Moroccan tea and one of them complained her massage was really intense and painful and at that moment we knew that there was some sort of miscommunication. It would make sense a guy asking for a stronger intense massage right? The manager then pretended not to understand English and didn't want to hear what we had to say. We paid her in full (350 dhirams each) and left feeling very unhappy. If we would have got the service we booked, it would have been a nice experience.

Later in the evening we went to a restaurant called Laayoun which served a nice authentic targine and scrumptious morrocan cookies for desert.

After the massage and exploring all day we were ready tired. We retired back to our accommodation and started watching American Horror Story on my IPad before bedtime.