(Aug. 3-9, 2024)
First of all, I must say that we appreciated Moroccan Railways (ONCF) very much. It has made our self-guided travelling in this big country possible and stress-free. We decided not to book the train tickets online, just buy them at train stations, which turned out to be quite easy.
RABAT
At “Aeroport Med V” station of Casablanca, there were English-speaking staffs at counter, we were able buy train tickets same day to “Rabat Ville” station. Our raid was just inside Rabat Medina, we could walk there from Rabat Ville in 15 min., and were able to check-in before dark. We found a very nice Moroccan restaurant walking distance from Medina called “Dar Naji”. Moroccan cuisines are surprisingly good, especially Tajine and Couscous, fully of fresh vegetables and spice.
Although August in Morocco is hot, the air was dry, almost everyday was sunny, and the daytime is long. I think summer is actually a good time to travel in Morocco.
Rabat was surprisingly European-looking and elegant and neat. It was fun to shop for traditional clothing, metal and leather handcraft goods, rugs and scarfs in the Medina, except that negotiation skill is required.
The medina is actually more crowded at evenings than daytime, because daytime is too hot. At night even after 10pm, there were still many local people or tourists taking walk. There were also many local kids playing outside at night. It seems quite safe.
The hostels in Morocco are often named as “Raid”, which is typically a guest room or garden at the center, surrounded by buildings at all 4 sides, and the raid usually large terrace. I enjoyed sunrise or night view of medina from the terrace.
Cash is much more common than Credit Cards, only some expensive restaurants and hotels take Credit Cards, so we often had to look for ATMs. The ATMs in Morocco takes high commission, and they often only allow withdraw up to 2000 MAD at a time.
Traditional Moroccan breakfast usually involves pancakes and bread, with butter, honey, jam, mint tea or orange juice. My favorite is the Moroccan mint tea, which is hot green tea with fresh mint leaves, served with sugar.
We took taxi to Sale Medina and Chellah for sight-seeing. It was difficult to hail a taxi out of town, we needed to negotiate with non-English-speaking taxi driver with calculator function in our phone, and teach them directions with google map in our phone.
Sale Medina was lovely, full of traditional housings with white walls with wooden roofing. However, here we learnt the bitter truth that any nice people who try to show us around or give us help must ask us for guide fee or tips, so from then on, we always told people that we don’t need help… However, this “guide” did lead us to the beautiful seaside, and show us to some nice places. When we walked along the city wall near seaside, we were shock to see both sides of the wall were extensive areas of Islamic cemetery and overflown with graves.
Chellah was huge area with well-maintained ruins and gardens. Also, there was a really nice restaurant with high standard foods and a great view overseeing the garden and birds. It was a perfect place to spend for a relaxing afternoon.
FEZ
2 Days later, we took 3-hour direct train with 1st class seats from Rabat to Fez. The platform was easy to find, and trains were on time. 1st class cabins always have A/C, non-assigned seats but have little table for short-distance trains; assigned seats in 6-seat private rooms for long-distance trains. It was very comfortable.
Our raid in Fez Medina was only 850m from the Blue Gate entrance of Medina, but our taxi driver drove us to opposite side of the Medina, so we had to walk uphill in the maze of Medina, through in-construction areas and again had to pay for “guide” fee to our raid.
Fez was inland, and much hotter than Rabat. Fortunately, our lovely raid had A/C, and the best terrace. Since we were the only guests at the time, we were free to hang our laundry, even ate dinner on the terrace. Because of this amazing terrace, Fez become my favorite city in Morocco. Moreover, it was interesting to explore local streets and markets at night. It was safe and cooler at night.
Daytime was too hot, we often bought sandwiches to eat in our raid, and only went shopping by evening. If you are interested in street foods (meat sandwiches, fried foods, bakery…) and fresh-squeezed juices, they are cheap and tasty. A meat sandwich typically costed about 15 to 20 MAD, fresh juice or shake typically costed between 7 to 20 MAD. The meat sandwich usually contains fried potatoes and Moroccan chili sauce inside, which tasted surprisingly good. I also recommend the Moroccan Salad, which includes various colorful vegetables and beans.
MEKNES
Other than shopping in the Medina, we also joined a day tour to Meknes, Volubilis and Moulay Idriss. We also could take a day tour to Chefchaouen from Fez, but it would have been 5 hours one way to Chefchaouen, so we chose a relaxing day in Fez instead.
Meknes a nice trip. Volubilis was ancient Roman-Berber ruins at Volubilis as we expected. Also, it was interesting to walk into the beautiful Islamic town Moulay Idriss, and learnt more about the Islamic culture.
Places that we stayed:
Rabat – Riad Jbara
Fez – Dar Arinas Fez