Dar Maya

My personal Marrakech-to-Essaouira playlist probably wouldn’t have included German power ballad ‘Wind of Change’ by Scorpions but it was our sharp-suited driver’s CD, and he didn’t speak English so we went with it. By the time the unplugged recording of Hotel California (the audience was really loving that guitar solo) started up for the third time, my California boy was shaking with stifled hysteria and I attempted to speak French for the first time in over a decade. (Our driver, it turned out, was a delight.) Three hours, several Bon Jovi songs, and one shining-sea-as-our-backdrop photoshoot later, we arrived at Essaouira’s shoreline. We were handed over to a silent gent with a cart who whisked us through the gate in the medina wall and led us to Dar Maya.

A discreet door down one of the medina’s myriad alleys was opened by a supremely cheerful fellow who tipped our cart man when we didn’t have change and lugged our luggage to our minimalist room – all calming pale colours, framed YSL postcards and candlelit alcoves. The contemporary style’s quite the antidote to the dazzlingly hectic streets outside. I ran around stroking our room’s sleek tadelakt for a while (so smooth! so cool!) then headed further up… Dar Maya’s a lovely place from head to toe, but my goodness that rooftop’s spectacular if you’re into spying into other people’s buildings and watching the waves a block away.

We wandered down to dinner and loitered in the cool courtyard before being ushered in to the tiny dining room for our tagines. Now, by the end of our honeymoon we’d be tagined out as probably often occurs on first forays into Morocco – but this was our very first North African night, and our cinnamon-y slow-cooked lamb and lemony chicken, washed down with a local rosé, were as delicious as you could dream of after a day of travelling.

After a night of serene slumber – except for when some idiot tried to put her cameras in the in-room safe and set off the alarm (sorry, fellow guests) – breakfast was a filling array of Moroccan pancakes with honey and fruit and a ‘very good’ omelette for Mr Smith. It was served by a smiley lady I later spied making the bed in the suite across the courtyard from our room (we gave each other a cheery wave through the window).

Venturing out we politely declined an offer from a friendly marijuana-selling man who was a reminder of Hendrix’s heyday here in 1969. The medina had seemed labyrinthine on arrival the night before, but in the morning light, and armed with Google Maps, we felt more confident and found our way to the old ramparts in under a minute. It was there that we learnt two facts about Essaouira: you won’t love it if you don’t like seagulls, and if you wear a short skirt – hello, fellow European tourist letting the side down – it’ll be blown up around your waist repeatedly. Luckily we harbour no Tippi Hedren-worthy fears and we were relatively sensibly attired… but that wind also keeps temperatures down, and we still managed to get sunburnt immediately. Amateurs.

We retreated back to Dar Maya to hide our hot-pink shame, Mr Smith in the petite hot tub on the roof, sipping mint tea, and me enveloped in near darkness in the hotel’s jewel-box of a hammam, having hot water thrown over my head and attempting to engage my new best friend in half-French-half-English chat between buckets. I have an uncontrollable urge to take sharp intakes of breath whenever water hits me the face, but there’s still something undeniably decadent about being part-drowned by a slightly brutal trilinguist while sitting in a dark room wearing just your knickers. The in-room massage that followed was deeply relaxing.

After that, staggering out in nothing but my robe and lots of massage oil to seek Mr Smith, I ran straight into Gareth, the bronzed Brit who runs the place (you can often find his utterly adorable pups, Eddy and Nini, lounging around downstairs, coolly ignoring cooing guests). Politely pretending not to notice that I was a deliriously blissed-out neon-pink-faced wreck – perhaps that’s standard for new arrivals in Essaouira? – he was delighted to hear we were enjoying our stay.

That evening, covered in aloe vera, we ventured out to La Table by Madada for our first dinner out, a five-minute stroll away in the medina. The food was delicious – pigeon pastilla’s traditional here, but I plumped for the fancier lobster version of the filo-pastried pie – and the drinks perfect, and our slightly surreal soundtrack was a stool-perched pair of guitar-bearing chaps playing classic-rock covers.

The next morning we stopped at top drinking den Taros, just outside the medina walls, after another morning session of dodging fearless seagulls, shopping for intricately carved wooden boxes and pretending to be in Game of Thrones (filmed right here!) We’d intended a flying visit, but Mr Smith thought so highly of his Bloody Mary that we ordered another, and another, and eventually just stayed for lunch. We were sitting on their elegant blue-and-white terrace by the sea sipping drinks and listening to the call to prayer mingling with French gossip when we decided that one honeymoon is not enough, and we’ll have to come back.

After rides on a blue-eyed-camel with charming French children and a pair of glorious horses, it came time for us to leave Essaouira. This time, an entirely different hotel had booked us an entirely different driver to take us back to Marrakech for the next stage of our trip. Our entirely different driver was, of course, blasting the exact same CD of soft-rock power ballads. On repeat. For four hours. Oh, how we missed the serenity of Dar Maya…