Marrakech & Rabat, Morocco

It is well over a year since we visited Morocco, and so I’ll keep this short as my memory isn’t as fresh as it usually is when I write about places. Marrakech struck us as being very similar to Barcelona: touristy. The souk, whilst stunning and great fun to explore (as long as you did it early in the morning before the hordes of people and before the shopkeepers started grabbing your arm and trying to pull you into their stores) was pretty awful. We’re not fans of bartering, and prefer to marvel at things in peace, so it was definitely not the spot for us! Further north of the city had a much better vibe however, and we had much more fun wandering those streets along with locals and nearly no tourists, and hence we didn’t have people grabbing at us every second.

The whole of Rabat on the other hand had a completely different feel to it. Much more local, and tourists were very scarce. We spent hours walking through the souk and taking in all of the sights and sounds whilst not feeling like we had to run through to avoid being cornered. We also visited Kasbah of the Udayas near the river, which housed some stunning residences and buildings. Closeby was the Hasan Tower, an incomplete mosque, and the mausoleum af Mohammed V – a very impressive place to say the least! But by far the most impressive was Chellah, an old fortified town that now sits in relative ruin.