We had a marvelous trip and our expectations were wonderfully exceeded. Thank you and your associates for making our time in Morocco so special.
Our driver, Driss, was very good and an enjoyable person to be with for 7-8 days. He did an excellent job looking after us and is a very careful driver. Also he was helpful in Taroudant and Essaouira as we bargained for a few items to buy.
Our respective guides in Fes and Marrakesh – Mohamad and Noury – were both excellent. Their English was good, they exposed us to all of the important places in the cities, and provided a great deal of background information about the country and the cities. Additionally, they pointed us in the right direction to quality stores that we could consider buying items from (and did not “push” us in any way) but, rather, just helped us find places to look at items to consider purchasing. We definitely left American currency in Morocco. In addition, Noury, in particular, was a very helpful negotiator at a few places in Marrakesh where we bought some items.
The two stops between Fes and Caablanca—Mekenes and Volubilis were definitely well worth doing. We highly recommend them even though the Mekenes stop was quite short—lunch at a nice place Driss knew of and a brief drive through the town. The drive from Fes to Volubilis was wonderful to see too—rolling hills and low mountains all planted with wheat and fava beans and more crops. Our guide in Volubilis was also very good. He was someone that Driss knew well.
We have concluded that Fes was the ideal place to be introduced to Morocco We loved the old parts of the medina and our walks in the medina. It is hard to describe how narrow and busy the “streets” are. The sights and sounds were wonderful. We liked the Fes medinas far better than that in Marrakech where vehicles and scooter are regularly permitted and the pathways much wider. However, the public square in Marrakech was quite the sight/spectacle we had read about. Noisy, busy, so many people doing so many things.
All of the hotels we stayed in were of extremely great quality and with only one exception the hotel food was good—-in particular Riad Fes, and La Mamounia were exceptional hotels. The one exception was the hotel in Taroudant that was certainly “okay”, but it did not rise to the level of attractiveness and comfort that the other hotels did. The hotel in Casablanca was nice but the statement that it has great views of the ocean is overrated.
Regarding Taroudant, there is really not much to see or do there as it turned out. The medina walls were attractive but we only climbed to the top in one place and had anticipated there was more there or in other locations to walk around. As I mentioned the drive over was the best part of that portion of our trip. The drive to Essaouira was pretty non-descript, though the views from the fortress at the Agadir stop was very nice. We did enjoy seeing so many argan trees and had hoped to see more goats eating the fruit in the trees.
Spence.
(March of 2017)