Marrakesh, The Jewel Of Morocco

Never usually booking a package deal we decided for a change to get a little winter sun and booked a last minute package with Tui, All inclusive to the Hotel Aqua Mirage, a large hotel around 8 miles outside Marrakech city centre. The package included flights and transfers and seemed a really good deal. We flew from Manchester on the 8:30am flight and arrived in Morocco at 12:10, not a bad 3 hours 40 minute flight. The transfer to the hotel was also a respectable 15 minutes where we were invited to have lunch before checking into our room.Our room was reasonably sized with a double bed, a single spare bed, shower room and separate toilet, TV and safe (only the safe had a separate local charge of 100 Dirhams, around £8:50 for the week)Having eaten lunch and checked out our room we explored the hotel. We were shown around the spa, which looked lovely but had a pretty high price tag of 600 Dirhams for a mud scrub and massage, which sounded tempting so we promised the spa manager we would have a think about it. We also attended the “welcome meeting” by a Tui rep (which was a bit on the poor side) and then booked onto the shuttle bus for the following day for a trip into Marrakech’s old city).That evening we sampled the restaurant for our evening meal, which offered a good selection of mixed culture food, a large salad area and great range of desserts. The food was a good standard, if not a little on the cold side, but still enough to fill an empty stomach. After dinner we had a few drinks in one of the bars (rude not to as they were included) and then had an early night as we had been up since 4:30am to give us time to get to the airport.

We woke early the following morning, giving us enough time to sort ourselves out and grab a bit of breakfast before the 9:00am shuttle bus into town. We took a couple of boiled eggs each with us form the restaurant just in case we got a little hungry out in town and hopped onto the shuttle bus at 9:00am. The 15 to 20 minute ride into town was uninspiring and we were dropped off at one of the entrances to the old walled city, on the Boulevard El Yarmouk.

The first thing you notice is the traffic, busy and a bit hectic, making crossing the roads a bit of a gamble, but you manage. We headed towards the main Mosque, La Koutoubia, an impressive stone minaret built under the reign of the Berber Almohad Caliph Yaqub Al-Mansur between 1184 and 1199 and the largest in Marrakech. The mosque is ornamented with curved windows, a band of blue ceramic inlay tiles, pointed merlons, and decorative arches; it has a large plaza with gardens, and is always floodlit at nigh. The mosque is surrounded by street sellers that try to draw you in or “give you a gift” in exchange for over inflated prices for goods (we bartered with one for a sandalwood box that started at 350 Dirhams then bartered down to 150, the same box we bought later from inside one of the Souks for 90 Dirhams)

We then followed the boulevard on the opposite side of the mosque to the Place Djemaa El Fna, a large open square beginning to bustle with local snake charmers, groups of men with monkeys dressed in football shirts and dresses (please don’t have your photograph taken with these animals as it will continue to encourage the unfair cruelty in captivity), ladies that wanted to paint your hands with henna and market stalls beginning to set up for the day.After crossing the square we followed the Rue Souk and entered the Souk Des Babouches, a large area of winding alleyways that are filled with shops and stalls selling all sorts of merchandise. Here the prices start high but are easily bartered down to a reasonable price, expect to pay around a third of the opening price. Don’t be afraid to barter, join in with the proprietor and treat it as a game, you win if you pay the price you want to! The alleyways are crammed and lead off in all directions and it would be easy to get lost, a good idea is to have a home point marked on a map on your phone so you can get directions to get back to where you started from, or you may have to fall for the “guide” to show you back to a point to recognise. As an example, we walked around eight miles around the Souks as they all link together, passing some points several times not really knowing where we were going as we were just going for a wander around. We also passed along the Rue Bad Allen, the area famous for its tanneries, we passed without any problems even though many reviews warn of this places and the aggressive men that want to guide you into one of the many tanneries and then charge you around 200 Dhirams for the short privilege, getting quite aggressive when you refuse to pay.

We wandered around and “played the game” to by a couple of items, a beautiful sandal box that I mentioned before and some eucalyptus crystals that impressed us with their strength, a “just in case” for the next time we get a cold. We stopped a couple of times in street cafes for a drink and to rest our legs, most seem reasonably priced, a fresh orange and cappuccino seemed to cost around 40 Dirhams (£3:25). most of these cafes appeared to have wifi for customers (if you cant do without it for a day) and clean toilets you can use. There are some roof top cafes around the Place Djemaa El Fna, good places to rest in the sun and watch the bustling world go by.Whilst in the Souks we also booked a trip through one of the local tour shops for the following day to the Atlas mountains and the Ourika Valley. The price of the trip was a fifth of the price that Tui wanted for the same itinerary, we paid 160 Dirhams per person. We then returned to the pick up point for the 3:00 pm shuttle bus back to the hotel. The shuttle bus is actually a full size coach and costs 20 Dirhams per person each way.When back at the hotel we attempted to catch a bit of that winter sun by the pool, but by 4:00pm the sun had begun to loose its strength and the temperature drops quickly from a reasonable mid day 20 degrees to a poultry 5 or 6 degrees at night, so we retired back to our room for an hour before heading out to the restaurant for dinner.Dinner was supposed to be Italian night, however apart from the obligatory spaghetti it would have been hard to tell from the previous night. There was again a good spread though, and you could pick a choose between the dishes, wine or beer on offer to wash down your meal. We then retired to the bar for a few vodkas and coke and then back to the room to watch another episode of the current box set we were watching, (You struggle with the TV for more than an hour as the only channels in english are News France 24, which repeats the same thing every hour or Movies For Men which seems to have lots of films on that must be at least 30 years old).

The following day we again woke early, making sure we had enough time to sort ourselves out and grab a bit of breakfast before the 9:15am promised pick up time for our trip to the Ourika valley and the mountains. This time we took six boiled eggs and a couple of apples form the restaurant for our dinner then waited by the hotel gate for our pick up…and waited…and waited. Our pick up finally arrived at 10:00am with no apology for being late, in a minivan with four other passengers, two German couples looking for a day in the mountains like us. We were soon on the road to the Ourika valley and then as soon stopped at our first shop for a “toilet break" and time for a look round the goods on offer. Now we may be being a little cynical and the other passengers may have been in the minivan for a lot longer than us, but we had the feeling that this was going to be the order of the day. After around 15 minutes we moved off again and travelled onwards for another hour or so to a “real berber house” experience. This was again a complete farce, there was a stream of tourists being funnelled through a property, introduced to four ladies using using traditional methods to extract oil from Argan nuts. We were then sat in a tent and given a fragment of flat bread to sample the oil made to eat and also allowed a wipe of different products made as skin treatments and soaps on our hands. We were sure that the woman that was explaining the products to us was competing in an olympic speaking contest, to get us through before the next group turned up, she spoke that fast her words all seemed to blend into one. She then ushered us into the over priced local product shop. Inside the shop there was an interesting and gigantic old nut press and a large stone nut crusher, but when these were mentioned, the woman brushed these off by saying these were not used any more, but would we like to buy some oil?

After leaving the Berber house we travelled for another 30 minuses with tempting glimpses of the snow capped mountains we craved, only to arrive at a small town in the Ourika valley at around 1000m in altitude. Here we met our guide, a local man with little English and were introduced to more toilets. After this toilet break we were gestured to follow our guide over a rickety wooded bridge to the other side of the valley river and up a busy path, climbing steps and dodging many cliff side tourist shops selling the usual metalwork, cloth, rugs, fossils and ceramics. The path quickly rose from the valley floor and turned into a series of slippy short rock scrambles, but no less busy causing bottlenecks at times due to the older ladies wearing inappropriate footwear that were obviously not warned about the climb. We eventually reached a small waterfall caused by the ribbon of water running off the mountain (after all Morocco is quite an arid country), where we were again encouraged to stop for a rest and to buy a cup of mint tea. We asked our guide if we could carry on and let him catch up with us later, thinking there was still a good climb to come. Our guide told us that we had to wait for him and the others in our group, but running the risk of getting bored we decided to accept his wrath and push on. Joined by one of the others in our group we moved on whist our guide was looking the other way. The path climbed a short metal ladder and then began to level off. We then found ourselves following a path that was running down bank, returning back to the bottom of the valley, thinking this was just to compensate for the contours of the mountain and we would soon again be travelling upwards we ploughed on. Sadly we were proved wrong and soon realised that this was actually the return route to the valley floor and no doubt the overpriced restaurant that awaited us for lunch. The round trip walk was around an hour and easy going for an averagely fit walker with sensible shoes or trainers on their feet. Once all our group were down, we were indeed invited into a riverside restaurant where we settled to eat our eggs and apples. The proprietor offered our group menus, but became quite vocal when one of our group informed him that none of us wanted to pay the tourist prices for his food, but would like to have a drink. The proprietor tried to insist that we had to eat, but grumpily settled for the order of drinks. Soon after this we were picked up by our driver and rushed back to our hotel in Marrakech, without stopping for the opportunity to browse any of the drivers favoured shops or even to take a toilet break, We got the idea that he had an early finish in mind. I guess we only paid 160 Dirhams each (around £13) for the trip, so you could also say that we got what the paid for, however the Tui rep was selling this trip (their trip did include lunch) for 820 Dirhams (£66) each, so you could also say that we had a lucky escape. We had our day out, we saw the mountains and the “mighty” waterfall, we met some lovely other tourists and were back in time for our dinner! The evening was a repeat of the night before, but tonight was Chinese theme night (not that you would notice!). We also decided to stay at the hotel the following day and book the shuttle bus for a night in Marrakech old town instead.

The next morning brought a welcome stay in be until 9:30 when we were forced to rise or risk missing breakfast, that was only served until 10:30. The usual marvellous spread was laid out for breakfast, but we settled for a mix of cereal, omelet, tomatoes and cheese and some dodgy looking sausages, the contents of which were unknown. We then decided to try out the hotel facilities, after all they were all free. We started with french boules having never played these before. This game seemed like Traceys forte, beating me in style 3-2 (each game consisting of five ends, rules that we made up ourselves). This was a nice gentle start to our day of relaxation. We followed boules with a game of tennis. The Tennis rackets and balls needed a 400 Dirham deposit which seemed a little steep, but never the less we paid up and ventured off to find the courts. We spent a surprising couple of hours playing a few games, well more of a knock about over the net as neither of us will ever challenge Roger Federer to a title, this was in an exceptionally well maintained court. At this point it is worth mentioning that the hotel Aqua Mirage Marrakech has exceptional facilities about the hotel. The hotel can boast six full size tennis courts, a basket ball court, large astro turf football field, gritted boules area, a table tennis table, two outside sun heated pools, and one large heated pool, darts, several outside and inside bars and in the summer time its own aqua park. We followed the tennis with lunch in the main restaurant and another game of boules (to give me a chance of catching up, but this didn’t work) and then retired to our room for a shower and 40 winks before Dinner and our evening trip into Marrakech. We went for dinner around 6:30 (not sure what the theme night was tonight, but it looked remarkably like the night before) and then had a drink at the bar and headed out to get the 8:00pm shuttle bus into the old city for the evening (a 46 seater coach with just the two of us on board).

Marrakech old city at night is quite the contrast to the daytime, the Mosque, La Koutoubia, was lit up in all its glory leading the way to the main Place Djemaa El Fna (the main square), which was full of local people enjoying an evening out, playing local games and entertaining themselves with local bands and singers that gather quite a crowd around them and motorcycles and cars criss crossing the busy crowds. One side of the square was occupied by a multitude of food stalls with seating areas serving up freshly made local dishes (which largely seemed to be made out of sheeps head), kebabs and flatbreads. There was still the stalls guiding you into the endless souks that had been selling strong since the morning but had now started to started to close one by one. There was also a multitude of independent traders selling all manner of wares, from wooly hats, metalwork, lights to children toys. The atmosphere was relaxed, with people milling about their business, chancing their luck on coin toss, hole in one putting or bottle grab games (which seemed so primitive, yet entirely entertaining for those that played), watching the youths throwing illuminated toys up into the air to advertises their product or gathering around one of the bands playing traditional Moroccan music whilst encouraging the crown to dance. We were warned by several people to be careful at night in the old city and to watch our belonging like hawks, but we felt perfectly at home mingling with the crowd, with no unwanted attention apart form the odd passer buy whispering “hashish, hashish” in passing, which when waved away, were happy to do so. Leading up to the main square there were also a large number of horse and carriages with their polished brass glistening in the evening lights offering rides around the old city making the whole scene look like a picture painted many generations ago. We perched ourselves above the main square in one of the many rooftop cafes to soak up the atmosphere for a while and have a drink (coffee and a hot chocolate for 40 Dirhams) and then after another shot walk around the square and our own (unsuccessful) game on the coin toss we headed back for the hotel shuttle bus for an 11:00pm pick up, by then many of the shops in the souk had closed but the shops and stalls around the main square were still open and the bands were still entertaining their audience. Back at the hotel we finished the night with a couple of drinks before again retiring to our room to watch another episode of our box set.

The next few days were a little like the last, a lie in, then breakfast and a game of boules. This was then followed by another couple of hours knock about on the tennis courts, dinner and a brief stay by the pool (which was our intention from the outset (we managed an hour)The only thing that differed was that on one of the evenings we decided to book our one visit to the a la carte moroccan restaurant. The restaurant is situated to the side of the main restaurant area, but not entirely separate. We were seated in a completely empty area (the whole a la carte area was empty) and invited to choose form a limited menu (a choice of two starters, two mains and two desserts). Our waiter (trying his best to earn a tip) suggested that we could have a mix of dishes if we liked, so that we could try all the Moroccan food on offer. We both decided on soup to start with the waiter also bringing a selection of eight salad bowls, most of which remained untouched. For main again we both went for a Moroccan chicken Tajeen, a dish cooked and served in its own terracotta pot (which resembles an upturned plant pot) and followed by a Moroccan layered biscuit covered in almond milk and a fruit salad. The experience was nice for a change, being served at your table instead of dodging the other guests around the buffet area, the food was hot for a change, but also tasty. The waiter lingered for his tip towards the end and duly received it Following the restaurant, you guessed it, we went to the bar for a few drinks then retired to our room for a couple of episodes of “Fear the walking dead”

We did manage another couple of trips into Marrakesh, again we caught the shuttle bus into the old city to wander the souks looking for a souvenir bow for our kitchen table back home. Tracey had also decided she would like a leather bag as they seemed reasonably priced, most of the leather and goods being hand made made locally. We wandered for several hours but nothing either came at the right price or jumped out enough for us to want being it home with us (except for a bag that Tracey had seen on one of the first stall s we had seen, and was practically impossible to find again from memory) So we returned back to the Hotel for a shower. However the following day we returned to the souks to continue our hunt for that bowl and bag. So as not to repeat the day before, this time I decided to mark our locations on google maps each time we saw something we might like to return to. This turned out to be a great decision, as after several hours of wandering we had managed to buy a larger bowl for 120 Dirhams but quite fancied things we had seen on the stalls before, but were too expensive earlier in the day.The GPS did its trick and after some careful navigation and a little guess work (with some of the souk alleyways being so close together) we managed to find our way back to the first two stalls we had stopped at. Here I bought a leather bag to hold shotgun cartridges back home that had started the day at 650 Dirhams (because it was hand made and hand stitched, or at least thats what the seller would have you believe) for a fantastic 250 Dirhams, (about £20.50, the equivalent in the uk costing at least £50-£60) I was aided in my negotiation by the torrential rain that had started about 30 minutes before and was almost putting an end to the days shopping for many people. Tracey bought a soft suede tasseled shoulder bag for 300 Dirhams, which seemed a little high, but she liked it and the man was not budging much on the 450 dirhams starting price. Whilst I was looking near by I also noticed a great leather satchel that i thought I could use as a laptop bag so haggled this down from 850 Dirhams to 400 (our highest purchase if the holiday).We then left the souks for a final time and run back to the pick up point through the heavy rain, finally being picked up wet through and cold.

The final morning was all about getting home. Up early to pack and to go down for breakfast. We checked out and were picked up at promptly 10:15 by a large coach which was mostly empty and made our way back to the airport. Then after the usual (if not a little over the top in Morocco) security check and bag drop we waited an hour or so in the modern, clean and spacious airport lounge before boarding our Tui flight back to Manchester and the minus 7 degrees celsius that awaited us. What will we take from Marrakech in December? Probably surprisingly warmer days than we expected (when the sun was out), but colder nights. Busy roads and busier markets filled with warm and friendly people. An inexpensive winter destination thats a mere 3.5 hours away from the UK. A great hotel with excellent facilities, a good selection of food and friendly staff.

Next time (if there is one), we will be sure to hire a car and get out an about a bit more, the roads are busy in the city, but quiet outside. The mountains are near, but not near enough for us!