Marrakech

Where do I start with Marrakech?

Firstly, we flew direct from London Stansted in January 2017 with Ryanair for only £43 return which was a steal considering the 3 hour journey. After landing in Marrakech around 10am we hopped onto the local bus and got off at the Koutobia Mosque (pictured). We were staying in a well known hostel called the Riad Dia for the first two nights before planning to go on a trip to the Sahara desert.

I had preplanned by screenshotting the hostel world directions from the mosque to our hostel and on the second attempt we made it there. At that point it was still only 11am so we took our chances and went in. Cue the first cup of mint tea I was to experience, which is a regular thing in every experience in Morocco – from shopping to formal meetings, there will be mint tea. We were then shown to our beds and we decided to get changed (it was now 25 degrees in the sun) and head out to experience Marrakech. My partner had already experienced Marrakech when he last visited Morocco so he had some idea of where things were.

Soon we were strolling into the medinas and souks over whelmed with colour, noise and motorbikes. The array of spices and fabrics available were intense but we were moving so fast it was difficult to photograph. We wondered around and inevitably got very very lost! I warn you all now, if you’re thinking of going into the medina then keep and idea of where the main square is to where you are otherwise you end up walking in circles. 

The only reason we found our way out was my partner recognised his old hostel before and we found somewhere for lunch. What followed was the perfect tagine to start off 10 days of Moroccan food.

We then found a travel company as we had been aiming to which offered trips to the Sahara and negotiated 55 euros each for a 2 day and 1 night trip to Zagora. After that we ate and headed back for an early night seeing as we’d slept at the airport the night before and were both shattered.

The next day we spent looking at the mosque, enjoying all the different parts of the old town in Marrakech and eating lovely food. We booked places for the next step of our journey and had to prepare ourselves for the very early pick up time for our tour.

During our stay we came back to Marrakech between each step as a base. We came back from Zagora and stayed overnight before going to Essaouira. Although it was very funny (in hindsight) as we both thought we’d checked the date of the hotel we had booked that night and turns out neither of us had so we’d booked it on the wrong day. After searching for 30 minutes to find this hotel we were both understandably cross at one another and confused about how we had been so careless. We were offered a room at 20 euros which we got down to 18 before we caved at the sight of a shower and how we both smelt of camel.

We also stayed in Marrakech for the final night in a small but very cheap ‘hotel’ called Riad 63. If you don’t want to spend more than 12 euros then its bearable but not luxury by any stretch but we had to leave at 6am to get the bus back to the airport so we didn’t mind. That night we did have a lovely meal on a rooftop in the square and drank the last of the 4 dirham orange juice before saying goodbye to a very quiet early morning Marrakech. 

If you want to see my YouTube video of Morocco click here.