South for Christmas

As we were all by ourselves for Christmas this year, we decided to head down to Morocco to go warm up a little bit. We bought the tickets before baby girl was born and it ended up being more of a hassle to get her passport than we thought it would be. We needed her birth certificate before applying, and the Swiss were requesting that Daniel and I provide original birth certificates for ourselves dated within the past 30 days (Really?! Do birth certificates change after they are issued at birth??) Daniel got us out of that, and then the embassy was randomly closed for a couple of weeks... After the huge hassle, in the end we got the her birth certificate in time. Good thing; it would have been such a shame having to go without her. Evaëlle did great on her first flight. 

When we got into the airport in Marrakech, Jaxon looked at the Arabic writing on the airport and said, "I can read that: it says 'Marrakech Airport.'" We stayed the night in Marrakech and headed out first thing the next morning on the first class bus (just by chance) to Essaouira, a beach town located on the Atlantic coast. The boys loved looking out to the country side taking in all the new images for them: herds upon herds of sheep, each complete with its own shepherd; people transporting their goods on donkey-Jonas was especially impressed by the way they rode them side-saddle ("That is a bad idea," he told us. "They are going to fall off."); rickshaws; camels; even trees with a dozen goats perched up on the branches. That was something I had never seen before. When we arrived in town we decided to spring for it an hire a chariot to carry our things. It was a good choice as we had also decided to drag the baby bed along, a first for us, and also because I am pretty sure we would never had found the apartment on our own. Plus the boys loved it. 

Daniel had found this apartment on this internet quickly and when we walked in we were thrilled. It was located in the city walls along the ocean side. This was the view from our window.

The master bedroom

After unpacking a bit we headed in search for food.

We were not disappointed. At the port around a dozen venders had tents set up with an array of seafood displayed, various fish, huge crabs, shrimp, squid, lobster. They loaded up a tray for us and we said yes. They grilled it right in front of us and kept on bringing more seafood to us. The cats ate whatever escaped to floor. I was glad I wasn't here pregnant with all my toxoplasmosis paranoia. I probably would have been having cat nightmares at night.

After lunch we experienced our first Moroccan gateaus at the port. The vender had approached us while we were eating lunch and we told him that maybe we would buy some after we were done, kind of hoping he would forget about us. But no, he hovered  and he was there the instant we had our last bite. We picked out a few and then he threw in about five more for free, thrilled to be getting rid of some.  They were palatable...the first time.

Enjoying some freshly squeezed orange juice. This was one of the things I loved from my last trip to Morocco with my brother 12 years ago.

We slowly made our way to the beach afterward and enjoyed our first gorgeous Essaouiran sunset.

As night fell we headed back into the medina (old city) and had our first bout of carpet shopping. The guy was quoting us beyond crazy prices so we never had any intention of buying, but the kids had a blast climbing up and jumping off the piles of carpets. At first we tried to tell them no, but the owner said, "No, no, let them. They are kids." Hmmm...we weren't in Switzerland anymore!

Coming home we enjoyed our first evening by the fireside.