A perfect day in Essaouira

Essaouira is the Morocco that arrives at a different temperature. Three hours west of Marrakech, the heat breaks against the Atlantic, the wind picks up, and a walled town the colour of bone and blue shutters sits with its back to the ocean and its face to the weather. People come for a day and stay for three.

It is a small place, and you can see most of it on foot in an afternoon. But Essaouira rewards a slower clock. The light moves all day across the ramparts, the fishing fleet comes and goes on its own schedule, and the town has a way of making you forget the one you arrived on.

Here is how to spend a day in it.

Morning. Eight to eleven.

Start inside the medina, before the day trips from Marrakech arrive around eleven and the main lanes fill. The old town is compact, walled, and laid out on a grid, which is unusual for Morocco and the work of a French engineer the sultan hired in the eighteenth century. You will not get lost here the way you do in Fez. Walk it while it is quiet.

Have breakfast where the town has it: msemen, the flaky folded pancake, with honey and a glass of mint tea, at one of the small cafés around Avenue de l'Istiqlal. Sit outside. The morning here is cool enough that you will want the sun.

From there, walk to the Skala de la Ville, the long sea rampart on the northern edge of the medina. This is the wall you have seen in photographs, lined with old brass cannons, the waves breaking below. Game of Thrones filmed here, and the town has not entirely recovered from being told so, but the rampart was worth walking long before a television show found it. Go early and you will have the wind and the gulls and very little else.

Late morning. Eleven to one.

Come down off the wall and into the woodworkers' quarter beneath it, where the workshops have been carving thuya wood for generations. The smell is the first thing, resinous and warm. This is genuine craft, not a souvenir assembly line, and the town is one of the few places you can watch the work happen and buy from the person who did it. Prices are negotiable. The wood is real.

Then drift toward the harbour. The fishing port is the engine of Essaouira and the most alive part of it. Blue wooden boats, nets drying, men selling the morning catch off the slab, gulls overhead in a constant argument. It is not staged for anyone. Walk to the end of the jetty and look back at the town from the water side, which is the angle the place was built to be seen from.

Afternoon. One to four.

Lunch is the easiest decision in town. At the port, a row of grills will cook whatever came in that morning. You point at the fish, they weigh it, they grill it, you eat it at a plastic table with bread and a wedge of lemon. Agree the price by weight before they cook, which avoids the only real friction here. This is the meal people remember.

If you would rather sit down properly, the square of Moulay Hassan, just inside the port gate, has terraces that catch the afternoon sun. Order the sardines, which Essaouira does better than anywhere, and a salad. There is no need to be ambitious about lunch in a fishing town.

After eating, walk the long beach south. Essaouira's bay is wide, flat, and famous among windsurfers and kitesurfers for the same wind that keeps the town cool. You do not have to get on the water to enjoy it. Walk until the crowds thin, which does not take long, and watch the sails work the bay.

Late afternoon. Four to seven.

Come back into the medina for the part of the day it does best. The light goes gold against the white walls, the day trippers leave on their buses, and the town exhales. This is the hour to do nothing in particular. Buy argan oil from a women's cooperative, which is the regional product and a genuinely good one when it is real. Find a rooftop. Order a tea.

Essaouira is also a music town, the home of the Gnaoua festival each June, and the rhythm is in the place year round. If you hear it coming from a doorway, follow it. The town is small enough that you will find your way back.

Evening. Seven onward.

Watch the sunset from the Skala du Port, the smaller rampart by the harbour, or from any rooftop facing west. The sun goes down into the Atlantic here, clean and unobstructed, and the whole town turns to face it without being asked.

For dinner, stay simple. The fish you ate at lunch is the fish you want again. The medina has terraces for it, and a glass of Moroccan grey wine, the local rosé-coloured white, is worth ordering once. After dinner, walk the walls one more time in the dark, when the cannons are just shapes and the sea is only a sound. That is the version of Essaouira worth coming for.

A note

Essaouira is easy, which is precisely its appeal and its risk. It is the soft landing of Morocco, the place people send first-timers and nervous travellers, and it has learned to play that role. Some of the medina is now built for the visitor. But the wind is real, the fleet is real, the wood and the oil and the fish are real. Stay a second night if you can. The town is at its best in the hours the day trips never see.