May 23, 2014 - PM
MARRAKECH to ESSAOUIRA By Bus (3 hrs) 
Riad Thais, 360 dh, double including breakfast


Supratours Bus to the Beach
 
After dropping the rental car at Marrakech Airport Long-Term parking, we immediately caught the airport bus to the main train station. 

Adjacent to the train station, and next to the Ibis Hotel, is the Supratours bus terminal. The next bus at 2:30 was sold-out so we got tickets for the 5 pm bus to Essaouira. We checked our luggage and walked over to the McDonald's in the train station where we waited the 3 hours. We used the free wifi to book a room in Essaouira.
 

Welcoming Hosts in Essaouira

We emailed the Riad Thais for directions and owners offered to meet us at the bus. 

The drive was only 3 hours, even with a brief stop. Dave enjoyed leaving the driving to someone else and was bagging zzzzz's before we left the station. 
 
Pascall and Ani, the French owners of the Riad, were waiting at the bus when we arrived in Essaouira. . We let porters take our packs in a hand cart. The owners spoke French, but we managed to communicate. It was 8 pm and still light out. We entered the medina through Bab Marrakech gate near a bastion. The whitewashed houses with blue doors reminded us of its Portuguese past. The narrow streets were lined with tourist shops selling colorful purses, scarfs, earthen ware, highly polished wooden boxes and chess sets and carpets. It will be fun getting lost here. Medinas are a difficult to navigate maze and we were grateful that Pascall and Ani made our lives a bit easier.

The riad entrance opens to a stylish living room, kitchen, dining room combo. A stairway leads upstairs the rooms surrounding the atrium. Our room, and several others we saw, were extremely small. Nice decorative touches but no hooks or shelves to put anything. We kept stumbling over our backpacks and each-other. Since there was no outside window in our room, it was stuffy and warm. Pascal dug up a fan for me which helped and we did end up sleeping very well. 
 
We went out and explored the medina a bit before turning in. We stopped by the lovely Hotel Riad Inna and were shown the spacious Marrakesh Suite and booked it for a week. It turned out less expensive and much superior (for our needs) than the highly rated (Tripadvisor) Riad Thais.