Agadir

This is the first post from the series about our trip to Morocco in 2020. It was planned as a ten-day long holiday, however, we ended up being under lockdown for almost three months due to COVID first-wave restrictions. We could have stayed there even longer but fortunately British Embassy in Morocco helped us to get back to the UK on one of their organised rescue flights early in June.

Arrival to Morocco

We arrived at Agadir Al-Massira International Airport just before midnight in the middle of March. Later on, it appeared to be the last international flight allowed to land there for quite a while, although nobody was expecting this at that time – we had booked a return flight with EasyJet, which never happened after at least five cancellations we had the patience to go for.

Agadir airport is located about 15 miles (20 kilometres) away from the city centre; to get there we booked a private taxi service in advance. The flight was slightly delayed, so we had to get in touch with the company to arrange our pick-up.

Here is the first piece of advice – although we had O2 international sim cards on our phones, we had to ask friendly local people to call the company because we were not able to call from our mobiles – it just did not work in their network.

We spent about an hour waiting for a cab to arrive and reached our hotel in the city centre just after midnight. All, our taxi driver and receptionists were surprised that we came to Morocco at all because they knew that the country was going under complete lockdown.

Odyssee Park Hotel

As we planned to move around the country, we booked a four-star Odyssee Park Hotel for a few nights to be spent in Agadir. As I wrote in my Google review earlier, the hotel is in a very good location – near the beach promenade and various shopping amenities. Rooms are large with a small individual terrace. Something might not comply with four-star standards, however, all hotel staff are kind and provide excellent service, making stay in the hotel enjoyable. There is live music in the pool area and the musician is very talented.

Unexpectedly, on the second day, all guests were invited to the meeting for an announcement that the hotel was closing. It came as a surprise, however, it did not bother us much as we planned to leave on the next day anyway. Just keep in mind that to buy a SIM card you will be asked to present your passport.

Car rental

I spent quite a long time to find a reliable car rental agency. After reading many reviews about car rentals in Morocco I got it pretty clear that foreign tourists may have issues, although it may be not that bad – the majority of Moroccans are nice people. We booked a car with local service provider Samicar, which appeared to be even better service than I was expecting; they were helpful and great in communication whenever we approached them during our unexpectedly extended trip. Second advice: as soon as we were able to, we bought a Moroccan sim card with data allowance and communicated with different service providers using the WhatsUp application either by chatting or making voice calls – this is a very widely used common practice in Morocco.

Wandering around

Agadir is a relatively modern city with many amenities for tourists from Western countries including bars, restaurants, nightclubs and supermarkets.

Agadir city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960 The earthquake damaged about one-third of the city and killed about twelve thousand people.

Agadir had to be rebuilt after the earthquake. That is the reason why Agadir looks like so new city, including a brand new beach and harbour promenade. The architecture in Agadir is more modern than in such Moroccan cities as Marrakech and Fez and there is even no old town medina. For that reason, Agadir is sometimes called the Miami of Morocco.

During our short stay in Agadir, we wandered around the city centre, along the beach, and went to Souk and Agadir Birds Valley, which is a free-of-charge attraction with a nice walking path featuring different kinds of birds. It was early spring and beautiful flowers were all around the city.

The main attraction on the second day in Morocco was visiting the private hammam Argan Phyto House which we booked from home in advance. We had the Neroli ritual and two two-hour Relaxing massages, which were worth 1200 DHS (around 110 euros) for the two of us. After the whole procedure, we had a very relaxing time with tea on a balcony –perfect experience.

You may continue reading about this trip and our next destination Paradise Valley.