Category Archives: Morocco

Marrakesh

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The capital city of Morocco is Rabat, which is located 324 kilometres northeast of Marrakesh. It would take three and a half hours to reach Marrakesh by car from Rabat, it is the fourth largest city in Morocco.

Instead of coming from Morocco’s capital by car, we landed at Menara Airport in June. It was a direct flight from Glasgow by EasyJet. The cost of the return flight per person at that time was about £145 and pre-arranged taxi pick-up from the airport to the city was around £15.

We spent about a week in Morocco at that time. In 2015, Marrakesh was named by TripAdvisor as the No.1 travel destination in the world (winners of the 2015 Travellers’ Choice award for Destinations), leaving such popular destinations as Czech capital Prague at 5th position, UK’s London as No.6 and Rome as No.7 – impressive, isn’t it? The major part of this trip we spent in Marrakesh.

Accommodation in Marrakesh

Marhabbah Murrākuš! It is a norm in Morocco that you would rather find a privately owned guest house ‘Riad’ for your stay than a hotel. We decided to try two of them in Marrakesh; the first one was simple and thus cheaper but the second riad had large rooms and an impressive decorated private pool.

Both were located in Medina (old town) near Bab Doukkala Mosque. One of the most useful things we did during preparation for our visit was to ask a representative of the Riad to meet us after arrival near a mosque. You may ask why? Because even a detailed investigation of Google Maps sometimes would not help to find accommodation just after the first arrival to Marrakesh.

The old town is like a spider net and even taxi drivers may not be able to find the address you are looking for.

Getting around Marrakesh

The area around Marrakesh area has been inhabited since Neolithic times; at that time those were Berber tribes. Marrakesh was founded in 1062.

During the 60s and 70s of the last century, such famous people and groups as Yves Saint Laurent, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Jean-Paul Getty spent significant time in the city, attracting many more tourists to the city. Medina of Marrakesh is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (wow – again, we lived at least a few days in a world heritage site!

Places to visit

There are two major options to travel around the city – either on foot or by taxi. Walking is almost the only way you can move around Medina, although walking bigger distances may also be a nice way of spending time there. If you have gone too far away, you can always catch a taxi to get back home – will not need to spend a fortune on your trip back.

For example, we visited Jardin Majorelle. The Jardin Majorelle is one of the most visited sites in Morocco, open every day at least from 9am till 5pm). We enjoyed walking both ways from and back to Medina – around 4 kilometres altogether.

Sahara desert

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The Authentic Morocco tour

A couple of days after our arrival in Marrakesh, we went on ‘The Authentic Morocco’ tour to see the highest and most spectacular sand dunes in Morocco and to experience a camel ride in the desert.

We booked the tour with a local travel company well in advance. The duration of the Morocco tour was three days with two overnight stays as all included for a total price of EUR 120 per person (we paid in advance a deposit of EUR 70 per person). This was before pandemic, so prices, most probably, may have gone up since then.

To sum it up, this Morocco tour was very good value for money and we were completely satisfied with this trip. Below, are more details about this trip.

Day one – crossing High Atlas mountains

We met our driver-guide near the hotel at 8 AM and boarded Toyota Land-cruiser where other people were waiting for us to join the trip; there was a driver and six passengers in total, including us – just enough space for such a long trip.

The destination of our first day was Dades Gorge, a small village in the middle of nowhere. We travelled over the impressive Tizi n’Tichka Pass (2260 m), observed the Berber Villages on our way, stopped for lunch and sightseeing at the World Heritage site of Ait Benhaddou, which is famous for being used for filming more than twenty widely watched films. I even do not know how much time we spent there, however, that was enough to have lunch, walk around enjoying stunning scenery and visit the famous village.

Before arriving at the hotel, we went through Ouarzazate, continued towards the Valley of Roses, the Dades Valley, Skoura oasis, the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs and reached the Dades Gorge. The hotel was very quiet, the hosts provided good food and we were able to relax before continuing our trip on the next day.

Day two – camel trip and dinner with nomads

After breakfast at the hotel, we continued our trip and stopped at the Todra Gorge, which is one of the most impressive rocky creations of nature I have seen – a massive fault, rising to 300 m in a narrow valley. After lunch, we continued our trip to the final destination – the great sand dunes of Erg Chebbi; the town is located in the East of Morocco, only about 20 kilometres away from the Algerian border.

After arrival, we had a short break and left our baggage at the hotel. Before sunset we got our camels to continue the trip to Nomadic Berber tents where dinner, campfire, drum party and overnight stay were organised for us. The camel ride took about two hours with a break halfway. It was exciting, although that long ride on camel was a bit exhausting.

The evening party in the desert was amazing. We got a chance to play drums ourselves, although those only looked easy to play. In fact, you should practice a lot to be a proper drummer. Among many other things, dinner was outstanding.

Day three – back from Merzouga to Marrakesh

Early in the morning, we went back to our camels and returned to the hotel in Merzouga. After a short stay there, we started our way back to Marrakesh, stopping for lunch in Ouarzazate.

I believe that was the only occasion during the Morocco tour when we paid for our food, everything else was included in the price. We continued by driving over the High Atlas Mountains and arrived in Marrakesh in the evening.

On our way back, we asked the driver to stop at a local cooperative shop to purchase some Argan oil and other local produce for taking those back home. Our request was kindly accepted. I have to mention that the organisers’ promise to avoid souvenir shops was kept and we did not have to face annoying salesmen during our whole trip.

This adventure happened during our first ever trip to Morocco, you can read many more on this blog as we visited this beautiful country quite a few times afterwards.

Cooking classes near Marrakesh

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When visiting other countries, we always try to familiarise ourselves with local cuisine, at least as much as possible. For example, on our own we were buying and preparing seafood in Montenegro.

One way of doing this is visiting local restaurants, though it is even more exciting if there is a possibility to prepare food ourselves. It appeared that Morocco offers visitors to enjoy cocking classes; this is both an adventure and getting new useful skills in preparing Moroccan food.

Moroccan food

In Morocco, we booked a cooking class near Marrakesh – FAIM D’EPICES. The price was approx. EUR 50 per person and that included transportation, lessons in Moroccan food preparation, preparation of meals in practice, drinks and spice workshop (pick-up place usually would be arranged near the place you stay in Marrakesh, which is a norm in Morocco).

We learned how to make a complete meal, meaning bread, salad, a tajine and the special Moroccan patties. The main dish on the day we were there was the tajine of lamb with prunes. Be aware that they do not accept credit cards, so cash should be taken with you; we also paid a deposit in advance (half of the price).

Cooking classes

Faim d’Epices operates for a while, the kitchen is large and well-equipped. We also got very useful tips on different topics, for example, how to find out if argan oil is pure or how to make sure that saffron is genuine (these ingredients are expensive and people may try to sell fake stuff).

Argan oil is an oil produced from the kernels of the argan tree and saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus. Saffron has long been the world’s most costly spice by weight.

Both, argan oil and saffron are specific to Morocco. In addition to this, every household prepares its own mix of different spices to be used for everyday cooking; those may include caraway, cumin, saffron, sumac, fennel, mustard and many other ingredients.

You may wish to watch on YouTube my video about the Moroccan town Tafraout which we visited during COVID in 2020 (opens in a new window). In Morocco we also visited such places as Marrakesh, Taroudant, Agadir, Paradise Valley, Sahara desert and more which you can find on this blog.