Essaouira stood in stark contrast to everywhere else we visited in Morocco. While you still have the occasional merchant trying to get you to buy something from them, the level of aggression was far lower. For the most part, most will let you come into their store and browse without disturbing you. It was a nice change of pace and we found ourselves doing a lot more shopping unlike in Fes and Marrakesh where we just didn't want to deal with aggressive merchants after awhile. In addition, prices in Essaouira seemed to be much better than Marrakesh and Fes, especially woodwork and paintings. If you are looking for either of these, buy them in Essaouira. There are lots of places to go shopping in Essaouira, but by far my favorite was the Rue de la Skala, a street that essentially follows the western wall of the city. The shops seemed tidier, the goods seemed to be of higher quality, and since I was looking for paintings, this street had a lot of options.
Restaurant recommendation: Triskala Cafe was recommended to us by Jorge. It's a cute little cafe located on the northern end of the Rue de la Skala. A rarity in Morocco from what we saw, this place was run entirely by women. They have a small vegetarian menu and a few seafood options. The menu was so small, we ended up ordering the entire thing. The food was ridiculously tasty but perhaps it was also just me who was craving a meal without all the heavy meat we had been eating. What was even more ridiculous? The price - our total came out to 120 dirhams. For all of us. Remember the first place that Mohammed took us to and we were charged 120 dirhams each? This meal was so cheap and so good, we felt guilty paying that little - so we left a big tip. For the price, this may have been the best meal we had on our trip.
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