If you consider Marrakech as a warm, sunny place where you might have a good, lazy rest – I suggest forgetting about it (unless you plan on not leaving your riad during the entire stay). You will quickly realize how much energy and concentration Marrakech will demand as you navigate its streets amidst crowds of other visitors (equally lost and helpless) and locals on bicycles, scooters, donkeys, and horses passing within mere centimeters of you without slowing down. It’s EXHAUSTING. Finding a bench in a quiet corner of museums will be perceived as finding an oasis, and the morning we woke up at 4:30 to catch a bus to Essaouira felt like an incredible moment of peace. Mind you, I’m not complaining, but once again – if you’re looking for relaxation rather than a more dynamic change of scenery – Marrakech might not be the place you’ll appreciate. Which brings me to the next point.

We spent five days in Marrakech, and it wasn’t until the fourth day that we started to grasp the city. Bikes and scooters no longer scared the hell out of us, the maze of the Medina felt like something we could eventually tame, and, well, it all started feeling somewhat cozy. Just the day before flying back to France. So, if your first days in Marrakech feel oppressive, I advise you to keep two things in mind: first – it will get easier very soon; and second – even Moroccans from other parts of the country find Marrakech tricky to navigate. As soon as this initial state of horrified bewilderment passes, I swear you will see the town differently – and hopefully in a more positive way

Talking about the Medina maze, if you don’t want to buy a local sim card (we didn’t), make sure to install maps.me or download offline Google Maps. Also, pin every spot you want to revisit but might easily forget the location of – like a cute café near a slippers stall you stumbled upon. Because trust me, you won’t remember and you won’t find it easily.

Several years ago, we visited Tunis, where we encountered our first Oriental Medina. We would have been hopelessly lost there without the offline map. Compared to Marrakech, it seems small, comfy, and harmless.

Unfortunately, asking the locals for directions is not always an option – here’s why.

Frankly speaking, I hate the idea of suspecting dishonest intentions every time a person approaches us to talk. Suspecting tricks and scams all the time is very tiring and, let’s say, not the most pleasant way to navigate the world. Unfortunately, in Marrakech, it’s a mindset you need to adopt. It starts with passersby offering ‘helpful’ directions or even offering to take you to your destination (with a high risk of ending up anywhere but where you intended). It extends to fake airport sites, fake bus companies, and fake tour guides – the range of tricks and scams is astonishing. One of the most common scams is when someone tells you the place you’re going to (museum, palace, cemetery, etc.) is closed, but conveniently, their cousin’s shop is just a two-minute walk away. We also had our share – while taking a bus to Essaouira, a guy pretended to check our tickets, showed us ‘the best’ places to sit (as if we couldn’t choose our own seats), and then asked for a reward for his ‘services’. The bus driver, standing not far away, seemed completely fine with this regular performance. In short, if you struggle with saying a firm ‘no’, you might want to practice this skill beforehand.

It does sound like a basic principle derived directly from common sense. Whoever mentions “many tourists,” “crowds,” and “famous sightseeing places,” whether it’s in Havana, Marrakech, Paris, or Barcelona, also implies “keep an eye on your stuff.” However, for the first time in our lives, Xavier literally caught a hand actively digging into his tote bag. The hand and its owner gave up easily and merged into the crowd with apologetically raised eyebrows, but our paranoia multiplied by a hundred. And rightfully so.

I’ve never been good at it, and as much as I hate the idea of bargaining, you just have to go for it. Otherwise, you’ll end up paying three times the price for goods. You won’t see any price tags in the souks, so once again, the skill of saying ‘no’ might come in handy. Just keep in mind the price range you’re willing to pay and stick to it. I ended up with a beautiful hand-made bag, and even though it’s probably possible to find it elsewhere cheaper, I’m happy to have gone through the bargaining experience until the end. Remember, it’s all just a game!

Ouch, this subject hurts. And not only in Marrakech, to be honest. As passionate photographers who are also shy when it comes to photographing people, Marrakech turned out to be a challenge. It’s incredibly photogenic, but at the same time, I completely understand the locals who may not be thrilled about being photographed all day long while they’re just trying to mind their own business.

For a European tourist, it’s a ‘wonderful portrait of a Moroccan man in djellaba on a donkey,’ but for the guy on the donkey, it’s ‘the one-thousandth tourist in a hat taking a picture of him and his donkey.’ I won’t give any tips on how to handle this issue in the right way (I’m not sure I did it the right way either), but personally, I tried to be understanding if someone had an exasperated reaction to my camera.

If you’re new to our blog, a quick recap – Xavier is from France, I’m from Ukraine, and we’ve been living in France for six years. Still, I found it utterly shocking how fluent French people in Morocco (or at least in Marrakech) speak. Yes, surely, there are historical reasons, a colonial past, and current economic bonds, but I never expected French to be so omnipresent in Marrakech. I’m not sure how common English is in Morocco or Marrakech, but one thing’s for sure – if you have some French tucked away in your memory, it’s time to unzip it with some Duolingo exercises.

At first, I was very shy about speaking directly to someone in French because, as a Ukrainian, I HATE when foreigners speak to me in Russian. Gradually, I just gave up, though. As long as the person is fine with the language we share in common, I’ll be fine with it too.

Yes, but you were with your husband, one might object. True, but as we sketch a lot (much better tolerated than photographs!), it’s not uncommon for me to finish earlier and go for a walk by myself. I had zero sollicitations or any other kind of unwanted attention concerning my gender. In Tunis, I couldn’t have a minute by myself without someone trying to talk to me or make a remark about my looks. In Marrakech I had a feeling that people don’t care a fig about my mere presence. I chose my wardrobe carefully not to include anything too revealing or tight but quickly realized that female-tourists in crop-tops or large décolletés don’t attract unwelcome glances either. Thus said, I won’t comment on how ethical or correct it is to dress this or that way in this or that country, and generally speaking I’m upset that a paragraph about the safety or comfort of women must be a thing to write.

Several of the reasons we love to travel are broadening our horizons, discovering other ways of living and… realizing our privilege. As I said earlier, I am Ukrainian, so I can’t exactly say that privilege is something I had seen much during the biggest part of my life. With the war raging in my country, I have a right to quite a big share of cruelty, violence and hate on every day basis. Yet many things we saw in Marrakech shook me to the core. Child labor, beggars, people whose livelihood depends on selling one-cent rubbish and animal cruelty. I don’t live in a world of illusions and I KNOW that in France there is a lot of shit as well. In Marrakech I just saw it right before my eyes in a huge quantity.

I won’t add much more details but be prepared to see crates stuffed with chickens that get beheaded one by one right in the souk stall. As a mother of four lovely chickens, I can’t get this image out of my head.

Especially if your accommodation is located close to a mosque and you have no intention to start your day before 5 a.m – the time of the first prayer of the day. I am a tight sleeper, still I couldn’t be happier to have taken my ear plugs to cover muezzin’s voice.

This piece of advice always makes me smile because the only place we don’t avoid tap water is Iceland. 😀 Still, it looks like drinking local tap water (even in the form of ice put in your drinks) might seriously spoil your trip. I didn’t wish to check and I don’t think you will want to either.

I am determined to think about it as a huge conspiracy and the final boss scam, but for some reason Marrakech airport doesn’t accept digital boarding passes. As people don’t usually travel with their printers, they have to pay for printing out their travel documents. Naturally, many made a business out of it. 2€ for 2 boarding passes printed in our riad  – that was the expense of this trip I resented the most.

Also, make sure to arrive well in advance – the passport control, security check and whatnot were extremely stressful and we barely made it on time through the traffic jams. I felt awful for people running around in search of a place to print their passes… 

And one last thing – check the bus line 19. For 30Dn it brought us directly to the airport. The 19 bus is easy to find and this way we avoided a whole bargaining procedure with taxi drivers. One stressful element down!

Naturally, all these things to know are based on our experience only. We don’t rewrite travel guides so we don’t offer alternatives or multiple ways to do one thing or another. Still, I hope you will find these tips and observations useful.

Don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have a question, something else to add or if you had a different experience in Marrakech – we are always delighted to see your messages.

In the meantime stay tuned for the next articles about Marrakech. 🐪