I went to Morocco with Peta from Feb 3rd to Feb 12th.
She had already been there a few days when I arrived, because she was initially going with some friends from work.
I started out flying to Marrakesh on Wed 3rd, landing in the afternoon, and my first experience with Morocco was being ripped off by the taxi at the airport, having to pay twice the normal price. Unfortunately I had no choice as there seemed to be one guy running all the taxis at the airport. The taxi drove me to a square, and I met Peta there, so she could walk me back to our riad. A riad is a traditional Moroccan house, converted to a hotel, and the result is a small hotel offering personal service usually comprising fewer than ten rooms.
We spent the evening walking around "sucking up the ambiance" and had dinner at a very dodgy restaurant close to the Jemma El-Fnaa (central square).
The next morning we walked around the center, picked up our train tickets and tried to find our final hotel. That turned out to be very difficult, as google maps had two locations for the hotel. We went to both locations, and did not find our hotel. Judging from the description we guessed where the hotel should be, and then Peta spotted a sign at the end of a side alley. This really shows how important it is in Marrakech to have someone from the riad meet you and take you to where it is.
We had dinner in the evening at a restaurant called "La Sultana" which served high-end French-Moroccan cuisine. We had a VERY nice meal, and I was really happy about us having found this place, even though the prices were on the level of European restaurants.
In walking around the center of Marrakech, I had noticed some things. There are tourist and souvenir shops everywhere, and there's lots of people hassling you, either trying to sell you things or trying to point out restaurants or offering to be guides. The good thing was that they backed off quickly, just telling them no was enough, so they were not like the touts in India who would keep following you and pestering you until you gave in.
A really annoying thing about Marrakech is the ever-present idiots on scooters. Most of the streets in the inner city of Marrakech are quite narrow, and there's people riding scooters really fast up and down them at all times. We were really stressed out by this the first couple of days, but after some time you sort of develop an inshallah attitude to them. Some of them seem to enjoy scaring tourists, though, I saw several aiming their scooters at us, and then pulling away at the last moment.
There are lots of cats in Morocco, so everywhere you see stray cats walking around. This was a treat for Peta, who is a real cat person. It was a bit funny to see lines of cats outside the butcher shops, waiting for someone to throw them something.
To see a little bit more of Morocco, we had booked a trip to Fez. The train journey was long, exacerbated by the fact that the trains had no air conditioning, and the windows were closed and could only be opened with a key. After 9 hours on the train, we were really tired when we got to Fez. The taxi driver at the train station tried to rip us off, but the taxi ride was still about half of what it would have been in Marrakech. We were dropped off in a square close to the old city, and we were eventually met by a woman from our riad. We stayed in an upscale riad, La Cle de Fez, and as it was off-season there were no other guests. We had a nice private dinner in the riad in front of the fireplace. The decor of the place was really fantastic, and we had a huge room, so I was very happy that I'd found this place when researching hotels before our trip.
The next morning we were met by a guide at the riad, and he took us on a tour around the souks of Fez. It was a good thing we decided to have a guide, because the souk area was a real maze. We had a quick stroll around the different areas, getting a good overview about what was where.
Even so, we spent a lot of time the next day finding the pottery souk. I embarrassed Peta by buying a fez in Fez, but I couldn't resist the opportunity ;-)
We had a long train journey back to Marrakech, and had dinner in the evening at a "fusion Thai/Moroccan"-place which had gotten good reviews in our guidebook. It was pretty unimpressive and very pricy. For our last days in Marrakech we stayed in a very pricy, 5-star riad, Riad Monceau. They did a very quick welcoming, the rooms weren't that great, and we didn't really feel it was that much nicer than the other riad we had stayed in, at half the price. This expensive riad was also right next to a mosque, so we were woken up by calls to prayer really early every morning.
For our last days, we visited the palace...which had been looted, so there was nothing left inside, and we went to see the Saadian tombs, which was a hidden final resting place for one of the royal families of Marrakech.
We also went to a spa, the Bains de Marrakesh. This was an upscale spa, mostly catering to French tourists. We had a standard couples-package, so we were scrubbed with black soap and eucalyptus, left in a steam room for a while, and then washed off with cold water, ending up on futons in bathrobes listening to new age music. It was my first spa-experience, and I must admit I found it a bit odd.
For our final dinner we went back to La Sultana for our final meal. It was a nice end to our first holiday together as a couple.
The last day I spent the morning walking Peta to her waiting taxi. I then slept for a bit, checked out of the hotel and spent some time on the internet, waiting to go to the airport. Her flight was severely delayed because of fog, mine only half an hour, but because my flight also made a stop in Agadir, I wasn't home until very late.
Pictures are here
