Nov 04 (Tuesday) – Agadir, Morocco...A Show, a Market, and a Casbah with Views

Our shore excursion today included a show, a market and a visit to the casbah on the top of the hill overlooking Agadir.  Mary did a quick search on our Morocco blog from 2018 visit.  Turns out we visited Agadir on that tour.  But we headed out anyway.  Fortunately, most of today’s activities were different from what we did on our previous visit. Our welcome at the port.

And a colorful mural on a building we passed. 

The first stop was at Fantasia.  Our welcoming committee. 

The excursion included snacks of Moroccan tea and a cookie, Moroccan music and dancing,

some acrobats,

Berber horsemen thundering down the long lawn area and firing off their rifles (sounded like caps…pretty puny compared to the thundering horses),

And a snake charmer.  

At one point he had three snakes out at once.  Don’t know what the green one was but at least one of the others was a cobra.

Interesting people who participated in entertaining us. 

Then it was to visit the Souk El Had.  This souk is one of the largest in the world with over 6,000 shops.  It was a very large building with a few courtyards. 

Mostly it was a massive grid of narrow lanes a few larger paths leading through the building.  We only had an hour there, which wasn’t enough to see the entire building.  But we saw quite a bit.  The shops carried just about everything one would want.  It was primarily for locals so there was bedding,...

rugs,...

housewares, 

produce and spices...

a lane with meats,...

and all manner of clothing and other items. 

There were also a few souvenirs, decorative items, and craft areas.

We bought a bag of honey peanuts to snack on…it was well after lunch and the tour didn’t include time to eat.

We saw a lot of cats in town and in the souk. 

We eventually got back to our meeting place.  This cat spent some time on Jim’s lap…checking out his nougats.

Our next stop on the tour took us on a drive up a nearby tall hill to the casbah.  

The casbah walls looked new, or newly restored.  

Unfortunately, we only had about 15 minutes here so we everyone headed to the wall to get views of Agadir and the harbors below.  Views were great.

A few people opted to take a camel ride.  We had done that before and opted out.

Then it was back to the ship.  We got back so late that all the ship restaurants were closed so we headed up to the Galileo Lounge for afternoon tea.  Everyone else headed up too.  (At least three buses of people had been out, got back at the same time, and everyone was looking for food.)  Service was slow and they ran out of sandwiches and scones.  Not their best day.

Paul opted to skip dinner since we had tea so late.  Mary went down for a late dinner with Jim and Phyllis.