Asilah Off The Beaten Path

Before I reached Asilah driving main road P2 from Tangier, I stopped to fuel a car. The petrol/gas station was very clean and surprisingly (the only once in Morocco) very, very well equipped and reminded some rest areas along European highways. There was a picnic area, a wash car and a small playground for kids. Simply it was a nice place to take a rest, fuel and wash a car, make and eat some sandwiches etc.

Walking narrow, white streets of the medina I could easily discover quite many small architectural details, nothing fancy but... nice and interesting details.

Just one example on my picture: typical, Arabic in style, street spring. Notice the typical Arabic shape, white colour and decorations of the little structure. Add here some doors, gates, narrow passages and not so easy to find (usually they are closed for the public) little, simple yards among the white houses.

In most cases, ports are busy and not the cleanest industrial zones; simply they are not very pretty for a visitor's eye. It works a bit different in Asilah.

The oldest part of Asilah (the medina) is located on a high Atlantic cliff but there is a flat Atlantic coast in a newer part of the city where small port with colorful boats is located. It's empty, relaxing and easy to walk part of Asilah.

Although most of the doors are painted in blue, some are painted in green in the Asilah's medina. And these green ones are always of typical, Arabic, keyhole shape. As I know, green is a royal colour in Morocco, especially it's a colour of roofs of numerous royal palaces. But I am not sure whether royality possesed any houses in Asilah.