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Moroccan nights
Agadir is not your typical Moroccan city- it actually feels more like the French Riviera than like any other Moroccan town. One of the first signals of this difference is the night life: restaurants, bars and clubs.. all catering to a distinctively nocturnal population.
Aside from a few cities such as Casablanca and Marrakech, the average Moroccan town does not have much to offer in terms of night foraging. While streets are busy with people in the early hours of the evening- last minute shopping, men lounging in cafes, smoking at terraces or simply 'hanging out' in the vibrant streets- everything shuts down and sinks into troubling silence when the clock strikes 9. Past 9:30 it is hard, if not impossible to find a living soul outside: cafes close down, shop keepers lower the iron curtain and everyone hurries home for the evening meal. Eating out is no real luxury for Moroccan families: actually, those who do need to eat in restaurants are rather pitied by all those whose families insure a warm and

The Dorint Hotel-by night

welcoming meal for them every night. As for bars and nightclubs, needless to say that a culture that does not allow for women to be seen in such nocturnal dives makes for a rather lame night life!
So needless to say, Agadir's bright neon lights, "Papagayo" nightclubs and multiplying restaurants come as a shock to anyone accustomed to more sober nocturnal landscapes. Agadir's reputation extends deep into the Moroccan countryside- as far as the Western Sahara. A friendly clerk at the Laayoune Plage hotel was quite upset at having to disclose that his city's only disco paled in comparison to Agadir's marvels. "On n'est pas a la hauteur" (We don't meet their standards) were his exact words. Oh well, we made due with the jewels the Western Sahara has to offer: endless expanses of desert and ocean; and a few blue men, here and there (go there to learn more). As for nights, they were spend in the coziness of hotel rooms; in good Moroccan tradition!