(Our trip to Egypt is featured in the video too.)
It feels like every inch of Marrakech is covered in colorful mosaic tiles or intricately carved wood. Everything moves at super speed; this place has a different, hectic pace of life.
Marrakech was vibrant, loud, smoggy, colorful and full of life but no booze. Just joking, booze could easily be consumed in your riad (Moroccan hotel) but there weren’t many options when you hit the street. Think snake charmers, baskets of bright spices, lively rooftops, wooden carts being rolled through the streets stacked high with rugs and Muslim calls to prayer singing and echoing throughout the walls of mazelike alleys five times a day.
Everything is shamelessly adorned and it brings brightness to the tightly winding packed streets of the fortified city. The best way to see the parts of the city you probably wouldn’t have the guts to explore by yourself is with a walking tour.
We did @MarrakechGuidedTours, you can follow him on Instagram (we found him on TripAdvisor originally). I would highly recommend him. He took us (just the two of us) to the crafters part of the city where people were making all those dazzling items you can buy in the middle of the medina, you can smell the cow hide being worked into shoes, burning metal of lanterns being crafted and loud chatter between the workers.
We did the guided tour on the first day which was a good idea. It doesn’t take long to master the geography of the medina so we were able to go back to areas we wanted to explore more of very easily after the tour.
He explained that every single neighborhood in Marrakech has a school, hammam, bread maker and mosque. Of course he showed us vendors to shop from who wouldn't rip us off. He also took us to an amazing restaurant in the medina. So. Much. Slow. Cooked. Meat.
At some point during your medina walks, you have to find a seat at a rooftop restaurant looking down on the medina for an hour of entertainment. It’s water, soda or tea for you there though… it would be such a great spot for an adult beverage. But it’s a Muslim country so you had to retreat to the seclusion of your riad for that. Marrakech isn’t exactly full of tourists so you really get to see and experience the culture of the city.
We weren’t planning on doing anything at night because we thought it would be unsafe. False. We spent every night wandering the brightly lit medina. The hustle and bustle intensified at night, but with an excited, ‘it’s the weekend’ sort of vibe, nothing threatening at all. Storytellers set up in circles around a lantern in the square along with live music and people doing tricks and skits. This was all for local entertainment and not catered to tourism at all which made it even cooler. The epitome of people watching and wandering. We found one place right across from the Koutoubia Mosque (the highest building in the city that you can see from anywhere), on the medina side of it, that had shisha (hookah) and pizza but mainly: they served us wine. Cheers. There is also a massive, I mean massive food market that opens up in the middle of the square each night.
The riads. You will walk through an inconspicuous door into a sparkling, open, bright foyer with the sun shining through colorful glass panes. They will seat you in an inside-outside leisure area and pour you some traditional Moroccan mint tea.
Make sure your riad knows when you are arriving. Marrakech is a maze of tiny streets with carved out homes between them; your taxi may not be able to drive you all the way there. We set up a driver from the airport through our riad and a bellboy met us in the medina to “roll” our bags through the cobblestoned, bumpy, uneven roads to the haven, quiet, fully mosaicked space of our riad. We literally would have never found it by ourselves.
We stayed in two different riads while there. Both were built up in kind of a square where the rooms all looked down into a common area, fully adorned and covered in carved wooden beauty. It’s epic. Here are some of the differences…
Riad Kniza: the food was the best (and they offered cooking classes), there was a rooftop - with cats on it (of course, there are cats all over Marrakech), location was perfect, we had the most beautiful room with a tub in it and super high ceiling with colorful glass windows letting light in. It was lovely.
Riad Le Monceau: had the most epic rooftop where they popped champagne for us and we got to feel really fancy, they made me a special soup after my food poisoning because I literally was incapable of eating slow cooked meat for one more meal (but their food wasn’t as good as the other riad), there was live traditional music, their English speaking was great, our room was bigger but no tub. We set up a trip through them to visit the Berber tribe in the Atlas Mountains but I spent the day throwing up instead.
Over all I would say Riad Kniza comes more highly recommended from us but splitting time on both sides of the city was a nice change up too.
The food. We ate a little street food but mainly dined in the riads. The food at the riads was good. Especially because we could shamelessly pair it with some drinks. All the meat is slow cooked, the lamb was probably the best. There isn’t much to say about the food really, we ate some good food but this is not a foodie paradise. Every meal consists of flying saucer shaped bread, spiced assorted olives, and slow cooked meat.
I did get miserable food poisoning. We’re pretty sure it was from water though and not any food we ate because Kevin was fine and we shared everything. On that note, let’s talk about the hammams. Morocco has these famous bathhouses and every week, young, old, rich, poor, the Marrakech people get scrubbed down in a steamy room and lathered in all kinds of Moroccan oils. They also spray you down, which is where we think the water got in my mouth. I’m not really into steam rooms so it wasn’t really my thing, although it’s kind of shocking how dirty you can get in such a dry, sandy place. Anyways, it is a very Marrakech thing to do, so you may as well. Just keep your mouth closed.
Gender roles. I was nervous about this during my first trip to a Muslim country. I always stayed covered up, not to an extreme point but I made a point to be respectful of the culture and didn’t want to draw too much attention (see what I'm wearing in our video here). I wore a lot of pants (tight black jeans), short sleeves but no tanks, no cleavage, I did rock a tight dress with spandex pants under it with no issues. In the riad, I wore whatever I wanted, shorts included. I was never heckled or stared at and I never felt unsafe because I was a woman. In our second riad, I did feel like I got some slightly threatening stares on our walks but we had no real problems. Even at night.
The medina. We bought a giant Berber bowl that was hand painted and beautiful. We carried it on our back for the next 7 flights of our trip and it made it home in one piece. Bowls, dishes and pottery are so cute and so inexpensive. If you're interested in that plan ahead while packing. A cereal sized bowl that looks like its from Anthropology is $1. We also bought a gorgeous, intricate metal tray after a decent amount of haggling.
You haggle for everything here and spices are marked up like 800% so don’t get fooled. If you do a walking tour, the guide can be a good perspective on how much things should actually cost. We didn’t have a lot of packing space so we couldn’t buy much more than this. Rugs are around every corner and they’re fabulous. Wrap them up in plastic bags before packing though, I’ve heard of bugs popping out of them weeks later. I still wish we had bought one!
A few more tips:
- Avoid the henna tattoo ladies, they will basically accost you, draw on you and then demand money. Give them a firm no thank you, walk away and word gets around.
- You might start coughing in the evening. If you have respiratory issues, you may want to refill that inhaler prescription.
- Vendors may holler at you to come over or put products in your face, but just nicely say they’re pretty and walk away if you aren’t interested. They were all pretty cool with us not wanting to look at their stuff when we didn't want to.
- Don’t bring a nice suitcase, these bumpy roads will literally destroy them.
- DO NOT DRINK THE WATER.
- Get your hotel to arrange your airport transport to and from.
- Bring hand sanitizer and wipes. It is such a dry climate that the dust really just sticks to you. That being said, also bring lotion.
- BRING YOUR OWN CONDITIONER! Omg. I was trying to save on packing space assuming I would just use hotel conditioner on the trip... no conditioner anywhere. My hair was a tangled, dry disaster.
- The haggling wasn't terrible. If you really go too low on price, you can tell and you'll know your base. I was kind of shocked by how easy the vendors were to buy from. On the flip side don't be lazy and just give them the first price they tell you.
- Just an idea for you: I left my wedding ring at home and just rocked some cheap gold bands from H&M. Whether or not that made any difference, it made us feel more comfortable. I did however carry around my nice camera for our video the whole time with no problem.
- Even though it was easy enough to get around, print out maps to your hotels and the address in case you need to show it to a taxi driver.
- Set up taxis through your hotel. Try not to jump in a random taxi. Apparently the police there are cracking down on corrupt taxi drivers and a motorcycle cop chased after us in a cab once yelling at our driver... but he was set up through the hotel so we knew we were ok.
The travel. We went at the end of November and the weather was lovely. We stayed in Marrakech for four nights, two in each riad. After the first two nights, we felt like we had fully done the medina and that gave us a day to do a trip out of the city - like to the Atlas Mountains. Instead it gave me a day to be immobile after my vomiting misery, but we felt fully fulfilled. The next day was a travel day. I'd recommend at least four nights for the full experience.
We flew in and out of Madrid because flights to Spain were really cheap and getting to Morocco from Spain was also pretty cheap, although decently laborious. We had to fly to Madrid, Casa Blanca and then to Marrakech.
Safety. I've had a lot of people reach out to me since I've been back with concerns about safety as a woman or with a group of girls. Ladies, don't be afraid to do it. It was a wonderful experience. I was even expecting to feel unsafe at times but we didn't run into that at all. It is a city where modernity hasn't fully taken over yet and that is the magic of it.
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