Some links in these stories are affiliate links. If you book through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only point you at places I would send a friend.
I landed in Marrakech with a colour-coded plan and lost it entirely by the second afternoon, which turned out to be the best thing that happened on the trip.
The medina does not care about your schedule. Streets that look like through-roads end at somebody’s door. The map on your phone will confidently show you a shortcut that is a wall. You can fight that for a day or you can hand over the afternoon, and the second option is why people come back.
Stay inside the walls, at least at first
There is a real debate about medina versus Guéliz — the new town has wider streets, easier taxis and hotels that look like hotels. But the medina at six in the morning, before the shops open, when it is just bread deliveries and cats, is the thing you actually flew here for.
One practical thing nobody warns you about: a riad address is not a place a taxi can reach. Mine ended at a square with a man who walked my suitcase the last four minutes. Message the riad before you fly and ask them to arrange the airport pickup. It costs a little more than a street taxi and removes the single most stressful twenty minutes of the trip.
The souk, without the arm-wrestle
Bargaining is not a fight. It is a conversation with a shape, and once you know the shape it becomes genuinely enjoyable. Ask the price. Look at the thing properly. Name something close to half. Meet somewhere in the middle. If the number does not work, thank them warmly and leave — leaving is a normal move, not an insult, and about a third of the time the price follows you out.
The first price is an opening line, not a verdict. Nobody is offended that you answered.
Go twice. Once early, to look at everything and buy nothing. Once on your last full day, to buy the two things you kept thinking about. Everything you bought on day one because you were excited is what ends up in a drawer.
The two bookings worth making in advance
- A hammam. Book a proper one, mid-trip, and go in expecting to be scrubbed by a stranger with more force than you anticipated. It is not a spa. It is better than a spa.
- One day out of the city — the Atlas foothills or the Agafay desert. Three hours from the medina and the noise falls off a cliff.
I booked both through GetYourGuide rather than through the riad, for one boring reason: I wanted the cancellation terms in writing in a language I read fluently. That is not a knock on riads. It is just what let me stop thinking about it.
Dressing like yourself
You will read a lot of nervous advice about this. Here is the version I would give a friend: cover your shoulders and your knees, wear whatever you like underneath that, and bring one long linen thing you can throw on over everything. Not because anyone will stop you — because it is thirty-four degrees and covered is genuinely cooler than bare.
I wore a long dress and flat sandals almost every day and felt more like myself than I do in most cities. The medina floor is uneven and occasionally wet. Save the heels for the rooftop.
What I would do differently
I would give it seven days instead of five, and I would put nothing at all on two of them. The spreadsheet was not wrong about what was worth seeing. It was wrong about how much of a day I wanted to spend seeing things.
The afternoon I remember most clearly cost nothing and was not on any list. It was tea on a roof, a call to prayer starting somewhere below me, and the specific realisation that I had not looked at my phone in two hours.
