Agadir, Essaouira & El Jadida – Morocco

We stayed in Agadir for 1.5 weeks and attended a ‘Worldschooling Pop-up Hub’ there. We then travelled up the west coast to Essaouira and then El Jadida.

Agadir

Agadir is a large city on the southwestern coast. Apparently, it is the second most visited tourist city after Marrakech. Unfortunately, nearly the entire city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960, so this city didn’t have the same ancient atmosphere as other Moroccan cities. For example, the souk, although large, was more like a covered market you would find in Asia as opposed to being wound around the old shops and streets in the old town.

We were there to attend a one-week gathering of other worldschooling families who flew in from around the world. There were 65 kids, and about 40 families in attendance! There were a variety of activities and meet-ups planned, but our kids’ favourite was just meeting up with friends at the skate park behind our apartment.

We were also there for the Berber New Year (year 2975) so there were a lot of concerts and additional activities happening in town.

One of the highlights of our time in Agadir was a trip to the public Hammam (bath house). There was one for men and one for women. Each one had 3 rooms: a cooler one, a medium one and a hot one. There was no furniture – just white tiles on the floors, walls and ceilings. Each room had several buckets and two taps – one boiling hot and the other cold. The idea was that you sat in the hottest room first and sweated out all the dirt, then moved to the medium room where you scrubbed your skin with a special glove and washed yourself. The water came from an underground table and was full of minerals. Our skin felt so amazing afterwards! (Obviously I didn’t take any photos of this because everyone was either entirely or mostly naked.)

From Agadir, we followed the coastal road up to Essaouira.

Essaouira

Essaouira is known as the ‘Windy City’ and I can definitely understand why… The first day had gusts of 75 kph- there was beach sand blowing everywhere!

Essaouira was quite a nice town with old Portugese ramparts and walls surrounding the entire old town. The old town had tons of little windy streets and shops and there was also a really nice beach.

From Essaouira, we again followed the coastal road up to El Jedida. On the way, we stopped in a dodgy town that had an amazing restaurant – great food, great view and great price.

El Jedida

We stopped at El Jedida because the UNESCO listed Portugese old town looked cool when we researched it and we were told that it’s a vacation spot for Casablancans. However, in reality, the old town wasn’t really that impressive. There was however, a bustling, authentic, local market that we enjoyed walking around. And the prices in El Jedida were very cheap because there were almost no tourists there! For example, breakfast at a local restaurant was only 2-3 Euros and included: coffee/tea, orange juice, porridge, eggs, bread and olives.

Up next: Rabat.