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Rent our Essaouira Riad
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Riads in Essaouira
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When I was a travel agent, I used to tell my clients that Rule Number One is, always ask the price first. Good advice.

At the harbour in Essaouira, we'd patrolled the stalls, resisting the come-hither tactics of the vendors until we'd seen them all, and then we came back to Stall #1. It was high noon and I eyed the fish suspiciously, wondering how long it had been out there. I decided that to make sure our lunch was fresh, we should choose something that was alive -- lobster and crab. I boldly marched up to the stall and ordered one of each, and the vendor split the little lobster and prepared to cook it. We sat down, looking forward to this meal which we'd heard would be really good and really cheap (we'd heard around 70-80 dh for two).

At the stalls, payment is made upon ordering, and the man came to our table and asked for 380 dh. We were stunned, and I figured that (as I kept doing), I mislaid a zero somewhere). But that was the amount. He then showed us a price list: this fish, that fish...10 dh, 20 dh; crab...80 dh; lobster...300 dh. Why I ever thought it would all be the same price is still beyond me, except that there were no prices posted anywhere, I guess. I tried, with a pathetically thin application of charm, to change my order but he pointed out quite reasonably that the lobster was now dead and being cooked.

He did come down to 300dh, about $45.00 Canadian, which is way more than we've spent for lunch in recent memory. But being our usual fairly resilient selves, we rationalized that we'd make this our main meal of the day, and what the hell. So we perked up and waited for our meal.

Well... it was overcooked, stringy, and I think we each got about 1.5 good bites. The rest was sucking on various tendons and cartilege and imagining lobster. The crab was no better, even the claws.

By the end of the meal we did manage to laugh at it, or at least smile, but it really brought that ol' Rule Number One home.

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