Where to Stay/Pay, Tea/Pee

Several people have asked me for references/information about Morocco, so let's just start out by saying I found all of these hotels through www.booking.com, which I have found to be an excellent website for hotels (and when they say "free cancellation", it works like a charm). The upshot of it is, we are paying 50-150€ (and usually 80-100€) per room and living, as far as I'm concerned, in the lap of luxury. We fear our children are in imminent danger of being spoiled.

 

We stay in riads (converted old mansions with courtyards in the middle) whenever possible. In Fez, it's Riad Dar Skalli, and we have the best breaksfasts in the whole country -- four different kinds of homemade bread/pancake/muffin products along with butter/jam/caramel, fresh-squeezed orange juice, tea, and hot milk. It's just a bigger, fancier version of the breakfast we eat every day, at every hotel, till by the end we are all desperate to come back to Paris and make ourselves a bowl of cereal, eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, or virtually anything other than bread, jam, and tea. In general, Fez has some of the highest quality food we find in the whole country -- really delicious, and my favorite part is the assortment of salads and vegetable side dishes we get at the beginning; at the fancy restaurants, they are more elaborate, of course, and I could be happy just eating this for the whole dinner. Our favorite meal here is at the Pearl of the Medina, which we couldn't find again in a million years. In fact, we couldn't even find it the first time. Luckily, in Fez you can call the restaurant where you want to eat, and they'll send somebody to your riad to fetch you.

 

Some of the most luxurious foods are the ones on display at the markets, especially the gorgeous one in Meknès. We buy enormous bags of dried fruits, olives, and nuts for car snacks and backpack emergency snacks. Perhaps we buy too much, because by the end of the trip, pretty much all of us would choose starvation over one more walnut-stuffed date.

  

 

 

 

In the desert town of Erfoud, we stay at the Kasbah Tizimih (where Kate Winslet once stayed) for one night before our big desert bedouin excursion. This is where we discover we have forgotten to bring bathing suits for the girls; where we learn that pool water is freezing in April, even in the desert; where we realize that canopy princess beds will elicit shrieks of joy from young children; and where finally, I get the photo I title "Kazz rocks the Kasbah".

 

 

 

This is just an afternoon stop for tea in the desert, at the Xaluca hotel at Erg Chebbi, on our way to our 1001 (dollar) Arabian Night. If you want to go higher end, Xaluca is a good call:

 

Auberge Chez Talout, in Skoura is hard to find, but lovely, and the food -- served family style with no menu -- is some of the best we have in the whole country. We are treated like family, even to the extent that when we leave the hotel, we are asked to give a ride to the hotel owner's younger brother, a 15 year old who needs to get to the "big" city of Ourzazate for school. We are happy to give him a ride, especially because his name is "You" which makes every conversation with or about him sound like a grammatically-challenged "Who's on First?" routine. "Where was You going?" "Remember when we drove You to Ourzazate?" "Why does You need a ride?" "So, You, what do you study?"

 

 

 

 

Below is a fancy restaurant we enjoy in Marrakesh, but only because the guy who sells us the perfume bars tells us about it and walks us to it himself. It's hidden behind a few alleyways, a couple layers of unassuming doors, and through a carpet store showroom. I don't know what it's called, but it doesn't matter, because even if I told you, you couldn't find it.

 

In Marrakesh, we stay at Riad L'Harmattan, the hotel we need a guide to find. We arrive late at night, starved, and the girls are rewarded with their first-ever room service, despite the fact that there is not, officially, room service at this hotel. Still, because the girls are cute, and young, and hungry, the staff make them omelettes, served on a beautiful tray in front of the fireplace in the living room of our suite.

 

The best part of the hotel -- even better than the room, the room-service, or the turtles in the lobby -- is the Dutch family with children just the same ages also staying there. Though those children don't speak English, and ours don't speak Dutch, they communicate in the magical way children do and play games, tell secrets, have inside jokes, spy on each other, and all become great friends. Here we are at the night market in the Djamaa el Fna square in the center of the old town. Dinners here are not as elegant as the ones in the private, hidden courtyard above, but they are a lot cheaper, just as tasty, and really quite fun.

 

 

I don't actually consider us fancy hotel people, but when you need a room big enough for four that you can book from overseas, somehow it just ends up happening. We do eat at high-end restaurants, but also at street stalls. Still, the opulence of the settings is just too much to resist sometimes.
 

But just when we fear we are getting too soft, the universe reigns us in with a squatty potty. It's a challenge for the girls, and the first time they try to use one, Gigi ends up peeing all over her skirt. Pippa, in an effort to avoid suffering the same fate, leans over so far to look and make sure her skirt is safe that her hair ends up on the pee-drenched floor.

Horseback Pirate Happy Cookies

The seaside town of Essouira is known as a pirate town, but besides the canons at the fortresses, this is the only evidence of piracy I see.

It's a fishing town (fitching™ town?), with a hefty dose of "alternative" tourists (the ones who want Waikiki head up to Agadir) and historical remnants. It was a Portuguese stronghold in the 16th century, then Morocco's main trading port and link to Europe, then a French protectorate in the early 20th century till independence in 1956.

But by now, after nearly two weeks of cultural enrichment, the girls are a bit ho-hum about tourist sites and are thrilled just to play in the sand. It's not as perfect as the Sahara, but it makes for much better sand castles. You can see the architectural effect of our trip on their creation, which is 3 parts kasbah, 1 part ksar, and 1 part skala (coastal fortress).

The laid-back vibe and soft sand turns out to be ideal for perfecting an acrobatic street act. It becomes a huge gymnastics/cirque-du-soleil free-for-all which, if you know my girls, is just about heaven on earth. They're torn between staring and showing off their own tricks.

 

It's the kind of town where people come up to us repeatedly with trays, trying to sell us cookies and cakes. One asks if we want "Happy Cookies". I can't tell if he's trying to make them sound cute for the kids, or if they're laced with something, and he thinks all tourists are degenerates who would feed spiked cookies to their young children. After all, this is known as a kitesurfing town...

To round out our trip -- now that the girls have ridden their first camels, donkeys, mules, and even recently elephants -- we sign up for a horseback ride on the coast.  G has gone horseback riding before, but never in a setting like this, and it is P's first time ever. She is allowed to ride by herself only for a few minutes, and only Anthony and I are allowed to trot and canter, despite the fact that we barely know what we're doing. We're going slow enough on our scenic ride that we are accompanied the entire time by two mascots: a dog and the world's cutest lamb (thereby ensuring G will never eat that, either).

And the very last thing we do on our trip, as in India, is to get henna tattoos. In this case, we bargain down from 80 dirham
(8€) for one tattoo to 60 dirham for all three. They take about half the time of the hennas in India, and cost twice as much, but they turn out much darker and last much longer. That, and the sheer delight the girls get from them, make them well worth it.