January 8th, 2008, 8 Comments »
We’re finally settled in our temporary home here in Essaouira. All has gone well, though I’m struggling with a bit of gastroenteritis-related unpleasantness. It’s to be expected when visiting the developing world and hopefully will, uh, pass, in the next couple of days.
We’re very happy with our little riad. Technically speaking it has five levels–three floors around a central courtyard and two terraces. The wifi works like a charm, and we’re going to go see ‘the wood man’ later in the week. He’s going to make us a very simple wooden desk where we’ll work for the next two months.
Things should get back to normal around this site in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here are some photos of our riad. I was also fond of this odd tin of ‘email synthetique’. We could all use some of that, occasionally. But how do I apply it?
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October 25th, 2007, 4 Comments »
Last week, we started our search for a place to live for the three months we’ll be spending in Essaouira. It’s a seaside town of about 70,000 people about two hours east of Marrakech.
I was concerned that it would be tricky to find the right property. We wanted something ready-to-rent, complete with Internet access (we didn’t have time to wait around for a week to get it set up, and didn’t want to deal with utility bills and such). On the other hand, we needed a place with kitchen facilities. Combine our requirements with the very spammy, portal-filled search results (so typical of the online travel industry) I was generating, and I thought we were in for a bit of a search.
In Ireland and Malta, we’d relied on human filters to get the job done. When we moved to Ireland, the company hired a ‘relocation expert’ (really just a friend of the head of engineering, I think) to help us find the right flat. In Malta, we hooked up with the country’s biggest real estate company to find our Gharb farmhouse.
However, through some diligent searching, Julie found Dar Zahira (caution, groovy music ahead), a small riad in the centre of Essaouira’s walled city. It’s got three bedrooms, wifi throughout and it looks fairly awesome. We got it for an entirely reasonable price, and are looking forward to three months in North Africa before heading back to Canada.
We’ll be living, roughly speaking, in the center of this map:
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