DAY 1-3

It only took us 4 years and 9 months to finally get to Morocco after being derailed by Covid in Spring of 2020. The wait was worth it! After just over 24 hours of travel, we arrived in Marrakech and settled into our Riad (a traditional Moroccan home converted into a hotel) in the middle of the Medina, the original fortified city.

As I’ve often said, I usually like doing a bike tour on my first day to get oriented to the city as you can cover so much ground. Such a thing is impossible to do in the Medina with its narrow 6 foot wide cobblestone maze of alleys haphazardly laid out. So off we went on a 5 hour walking tour of the area exploring the Souks (markets), nearby monuments with beautiful 9th century mosaics, and the famous Jemaa el-Fna square where snake charmers entice you to hold a very docile snake (was it drugged? We don’t know) for some coin. If you are really good at converting currency, you won’t make the mistake I made and give them $20 when you thought it was $2! Oops! lol. Though he did let Tyler play the drum with the snake charmers, so maybe that was worth it?

As most of you know, my favorite thing about travel is getting to see how other people live and experiencing their culture first hand. So while the walking tour was great, the highlight of Marrakech was spending the day cooking traditional Moroccan food with Nawal at her home in a neighborhood outside the Medina. We started at her local street market where hawkers called out the produce they were selling…. Potatoes on one cart, basil and anise on another. A kilo of this here and a kilo of that there and Nawal’s basket filled with the ingredients we’d need to make lunch. Even the spices she wanted were freshly ground on the spot. The best part? Not a single tourist to be seen. My kind of place!

We diced and cut, marinated and simmered and ultimately ended up with a feast of tagine ( meat and vegetables slow cooked in a conical clay pot), Moroccan salads and sautéed vegetables. While the food was delicious, it was the time spent in her home communicating using my very rusty French, miming some words, and help from her daughter who was pretty proficient in English.

As Josh said earlier today, spending a full two days in Marrakech enabled us to really get to know the Medina… especially which way to turn at which arch or alleyway to find our way back to the hotel through the maze of narrow crooked passages.

Today, we drove all day up and over the snow-dusted Atlas Mountains, then down to the Dades valley where we will spend the next two days.

DAY 4-6

“Cue the uncle….” Tyler joked after our trip guide, Omar, ran into yet another relative at the once-a-week market in the small village of Kalaat M’Gouna where we were staying. It was like the whole thing was staged, with characters being directed to enter at certain times. In reality, it was actually about as authentic as it gets because Omar was raised in Kalaat M’Gouna. So he knew the ins and outs of the area (as well as every person it seemed!)

The village market was not aisle after aisle of souvenir trinkets like those in Marrakech. Instead, wares for every facet of Moroccan life was on sale here: tools for farming, live animals, building materials, clothing, fruits, vegetables, meats, a fish market (Syd’s favorite… not! 🤣). No one tried to sell us anything and everyone was super friendly and welcoming, including all of Omar’s relatives and friends.

Omar’s connections continued… as a surprise, he contacted some friends in a popular local band (Tasuta N-Imal… check them out on Spotify) and when he shared that his guests were also musicians, the band invited us to jam with them the next afternoon. After spending the morning on a scenic drive along a crazy curved road that climbed up and through a narrow gorge, we headed to the band’s tiny studio in a town about 20 minutes from our village. They played their fast paced Moroccan rock songs based on traditional Berber music, while we played the American rock songs we knew. Then we mixed it all up, a few of us playing with them and then a few of them playing with us (I’ve included some clips.) The saying that music is a universal language absolutely rang true. Everyone had a blast!

One highlight independent of Omar was the lunch spent with a local Berber family in the village. They cooked traditional chicken Tagine of course, but they also made couscous from scratch (you combine ingredients and then pass it through various sifters to get the uniform grain size), and fresh bread, both over open fires. It was surprising that despite having a gas stove, they maintained their Berber culture of cooking over open flames. FYI, it was the best Tagine we’ve had yet!

We are now headed to the Moroccan desert to experience all that the sand dunes have to offer.

DAY 7-8

I have a confession: as much as I seek out immersive and authentic experiences, even I can admit that there is a time and a place to do the really big touristy things.

In Morocco, that means riding a camel across the giant Erg Chebbi dunes to overnight in tents at a Berber camp. Ok…it was total glamping with electricity, plumbing and colorful Moroccan rugs, but I digress. Honestly? Riding a camel sounds way more romantic than it actually is. Apparently, camels are wider than horses and walk with a strange gait, so before long, our inner thighs were killing us. An hour and a half later, we could barely walk after we dismounted at the camp. But it was all worth it to see the spectacular dunes…they tower above you and the way the shadows fall makes it all seem like the backdrop at a Hollywood studio.

Earlier in the day, we ventured into the dunes on another touristy adventure: driving dune buggies! I don’t care how inauthentic it was, it was a blast. The kids drove. We hung on. It was our guide, Omar’s, first time so we put him with Josh who tried to get the buggy to fishtail and drift on as many turns as possible. Omar was thrilled! We even sled down the face of a 100’ high dune sitting on a snowboard. Again, the scenery was spectacular and dramatic.

We finished the day with an evening of Berber drumming, singing, and dancing around a fire under a vast array of stars (check out Josh’s 30 sec slow exposure shot below!) In the morning, we ditched the return trip on camels and instead, hitched a ride with the pickup carrying our bags. The kids were thrilled to bounce around in the bed of the truck!

Next stop? Fes. Stay tuned!

DAY 9

“Allahu Akbar” (God is Greater) blasts from speakers attached to every Mosque tower across Morocco. It is the call to prayer that happens 5 times a day….sunrise, two hours after sunrise, noon, sunset, and two hours after sunset. You can almost measure time by when the call happens. Those who are observant, stop what they are doing, roll out a mat, and pray for ten minutes facing East towards Mecca. Even our camel guide asked if he could stop to pray, so we had a quiet 10 minutes to reflect while he did his prayers.

We left the desert for the city of Fez and proceeded to drive through a snowstorm in the mountains. It was quite the contrast being in the desert in the morning and only a few hours later being in the snow!

We spent most of our time in the Medina of the old city of Fez. If we thought the small alleys of Marrakech were small, the alleys here put those to shame. There is a saying here that everyone gets lost at least once in the Fez Medina and I can see why. They meander with no rhyme or reason, some only as wide as a person. Luckily, I have a good sense of direction which was immensely useful navigating us back to our Riad. We stayed in a local area so we got to enjoy seeing people going about their day, buying fruits and vegetables, shoes, clothing… you name it, it was there.

Unfortunately, there is no way to make it home all in one day without overnighting in Europe somewhere. It was a REALLY tough decision (heavy sarcasm) to pick Paris as our stop. So we will be ringing in the New Year by the Eiffel Tower 🙂 Happy New Year to all of you! May 2025 be a great year!