Tipaza & Desert: Algeria's Blue Escape (3/3)

Par Gabriel Goldberg 27 April 2026 3 min read

Editor''s note: this article closes the three-part series on Delphine Sellami''s journey to Algeria, the land of her father. Read Part 1/3 and Part 2/3 . My journey through Algeria was paced by the warmth of home and the call of the open sea. The anchor of that overwhelming week will remain that famous Friday. In Algeria, Friday is the sacred day — of prayer, of gathering, of the shared meal. My aunt had prepared a monumental couscous, cooked with a love and depth of flavour I will never forget. It was around that dish, in the joyful clamour of my rediscovered family, that I fully measured how rooted I was here. But to understand northern Algeria, you must also keep looking out to sea. The sun tips into the Mediterranean — a daily ritual on the Algiers coast. Tipaza: the poetry of sea and land My cousins took me to discover the coast, heading toward Tipaza. The road itself is a spectacle, where verdant nature, trees and the Mediterranean answer one another. Tipaza is a place of stunning poetic beauty. The Roman ruins literally tumble into the warm waters. On the road to Tipaza, the umbrella pine watches over the vines and the sea. We sat down in a seafood restaurant facing the waves. There you taste the day''s catch in masterful simplicity. That is where Algeria''s charm lies: a still-preserved tourism. Unlike Marrakech, where international tourist effervescence can sometimes saturate the space, the Kasbah of Algiers or the shores of Tipaza are mostly visited by local,…