Experience

Everything about this place is so far from <Nova Scotia> (insert any place in the "western" world here) in so many ways, that words and even pictures can't capture it. It's a place that has to be experienced.

The beach in Essaouira - almost always windy

For example, today's experiences included: haggling over the price of bread, peas, beans, lemons, hand-made chips and Moroccan donuts, swimming in the Atlantic (in March), discovering that one can purchase a whole roasted sheep's head with horns still attached, smelling the overpowering scent of fish, eels, skates, shrimp and octopus laid out in the souk, sketching and  writing from the ramparts, learning that Muslim-run shops are usually closed on Fridays for jumu'ah prayer, buying fish fresh off a boat in the port (decapitated and cleaned for 15 dirham) and cooking it for dinner, learning to light a gas oven with a scrap of burning paper (yes, eyebrows are still intact), hearing the call to evening prayer echoing over the rooftops, and saying goodbye to Eva's best friend, Aris, and her mom, who visited for a few days over March Break and are returning to Halifax by way of Marrakech, Madrid, Frankfurt and Calgary.  An average extraordinary day here in Morocco.

The ramparts overlooking the Atlantic 

This is fresh, even for us Maritimers

Our 3-story riad (apartment) - outside...

...and inside.  An oasis