Marrakech, Morocco!

Last week my friend Lindsay and I took a trip to Marrakech, Morocco! Our program had mentioned a trip to Morocco at the beginning of the semester, and Lindsay and I had both been interested. We didn’t end up going on the trip through our program, so we decided to go on our own. It was cool being able to go to another continent and experience another culture that is so different from London.

Our first day started very early. Our flight was at six in the morning, so we had to take a bus to the airport that left around 3:30am, and neither Lindsay or I slept that night. I’m quite the night owl, so even if we hadn’t been catching a flight I probably would have still been awake, but we also decided it would be better to stay awake since we were both afraid of sleeping through our alarms and missing our flight. We got to Morocco at around 11am, and got driven to our riad (hostel). The workers at our riad were very friendly and gave us a map, showed us how to get to everything, and gave recommendations on day trips to take.

Marrakech is separated into two parts: the new city and the old city. We stayed in the old city, which is the walled medieval city that dates back to the Berber Empire. It’s made of a bunch of narrow, winding streets and is filled with lots of markets and street vendors. The new city is more modernized and has luxury hotels, shopping, and of course, food chains like McDonald’s and Starbucks. We first went to one of the big attractions in the old city, Jemaa el Fna, which is a huge square that is a popular spot for merchants and entertainers. There are three types of people that you see all over Jemaa el Fna: henna tattoo ladies, snake charmers, and the men with monkeys. The man at our hostel warned us about these three types of people because they are very straightforward. They will not hesitate to push their service on you whether you agreed to it or not and without agreeing on a price. So you have to keep your distance in the square or else someone could just come up to you and put a snake around your neck or a monkey on your shoulder without your permission and then make you pay for it. I have to admit though, the monkeys were very cute. Some of them were even dressed up in football (soccer) jerseys. We spent the rest of the day walking around the old city getting lost plenty of times and admiring the beautiful mosques.

Seeing as how neither of us had slept that night, we were both exhausted and went to bed pretty early that night. The next day we started off by going to the Majorelle Garden in the new city. This was one of my favorite things that we did because the garden was so beautiful. I took so many pictures and absolutely loved all of the blue buildings.

After the Majorelle Garden, we made our way back into the old city to go into some of the palaces. First we went into El Badi Palace, which is actually a ruined palace. We could go down into some of the ruins and walk through the underground passageways. There was also a rooftop terrace that we went up to which gave us a really great view of the entire city. On one side you could see all over the old city, and to the other side you could see the Atlas Mountains. It was funny to be standing in 80 degree weather in Morocco and then turn around and see snow-capped mountains on the other side of the city.

Then we walked to Bahia Palace which also has a handful of gardens inside. This palace was really beautiful. The wood carvings throughout the palace were so intricate and impressive. It was interesting to see this palace after seeing the ruins of El Badi Palace and compare the two. On another note, there were SO many stray cats in Marrakech. We saw them mostly in the old city, but this day we decided we should count how many cats we saw. Since we had been in the new city for the first half of the day, we were probably only in the only city for maybe four or five hours. In that time, we saw over 35 cats, and we decided to stop counting after we left the palace. They were all soooo cute, but we saw a ton of tiny little kittens on our way into Bahia Palace. There was one little kitty that was just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I went to take a picture, and this cat was straight up modeling. Just look at this kitty, and try to tell me it’s not the cutest thing in the world.

We spent the next day on a trip that we had booked through our riad. We had been told that we would be taken to a Berber woman’s house in the Atlas Mountains and that she would make us a traditional Berber breakfast and teach us how to make Moroccan mint tea. Afterwards we were supposed to take a short camel ride, hike through the mountains to a waterfall, get something to eat, and then get dropped back off at our riad. The day didn’t quite follow the schedule so Lindsay and I were a little confused. We completely skipped breakfast at the Berber woman’s house, which honestly Lindsay and I were really excited for. We hadn’t eaten before we left and were looking forward to it. So when we skipped it we were both confused and very hungry 😦 We didn’t get to a ride a camel this day because the tour guides were not communicating with us very well. Basically there was just a misunderstanding, and we were hurried back onto the bus before we could get our camel ride. After that we made a stop at a house in the mountains where a bunch of women were making argan oil. We didn’t know we’d be stopping for this, but they let us sample all of their products, and it was interesting to see the women work. We then drove close to an hour through the Atlas Mountains, and were led on a hike up through the mountains to the waterfall. Lindsay and I were still so confused at this point since nothing had really followed the schedule we had been given. It didn’t make us feel any better when they started having us walk across these dangerous looking bridges over rocks and running water. We were basically rock climbing up the side of a waterfall, which was slightly terrifying. The waterfall was really pretty though! There was a little area up there with tables overlooking the waterfall where you could buy mint tea and other drinks.

When we got back to our riad we told the worker who had helped us book the trip how we had not done all of the things that had been advertised. He was really helpful and called the company to get things settled. He gave us some of our money back, and helped organize a camel ride for us the next day. That was the #1 thing we wanted to do in Morocco, and it ended up working out for the better this way. We were able to get a private camel ride in traditional Moroccan clothing for about an hour on a day with much better weather! So despite the confusion of the day before, it ended up working out because our camel ride was the highlight of the trip. My camel was too cute, and the guy that led our camel ride was really nice and made us both camel rings out of leaves, which was so cool!

The next day we woke up early and made our way back to London. Morocco was an interesting trip, and we did a bunch of cool stuff. The downside of our time in Morocco was definitely the attention that we received as young women traveling alone from a lot of local men. We got catcalled too many times to count, and some of the comments that were made about us made us both feel very violated and unsafe. A young boy (probably around 12 years old) just outside our riad even thought it would be okay to grab my butt as I walked by, which I was clearly NOT okay with (I gave the little twerp a piece of my mind..). All of the people that we interacted closely with (at our riad, at restaurants, on our tours, etc.) were so friendly and welcoming, but the uncomfortable comments that we received from strangers seemed to overshadow all of the nice ones. Despite all of the fun things that we did, I’m not in any rush to go to back to Morocco solely because I did not feel 100% safe during my time there.

On a lighter note, I have a few more fun trips planned before I come home in just over two weeks. I’m headed off to Iceland tonight and then to Edinburgh and Dublin next week. Then I’ve got one more week left in London before I’m back to the US!