Journal — marrakech
Marrakech: Riad, Palmeraie or Desert
Three houses within forty minutes of each other, and three quite different weeks. What each one actually feels like.
A medina riad puts you behind a plain door on a lane, with a courtyard, a plunge pool and a roof terrace above the call to prayer. You walk everywhere and the souks start where the house ends. It is the most atmospheric option and the least practical with luggage or small children.
The Palmeraie is the compromise most families make: walled gardens, a heated pool, a hammam, ground-floor bedrooms, and a driver for the fifteen minutes into town. Space per pound spent is at its best here.
Agafay is the surprise. Forty minutes out, the stone desert opens into a landscape with no vegetation and the Atlas on the horizon, and the kasbahs there run private dining outdoors and spa tents. One or two nights transforms a city week.
Moroccan house teams are large and included: a cook, a housekeeper, a houseman and a gardener, with food billed at cost. It is the reason a whole riad often costs less than two hotel suites and comes with three meals prepared in the house.
Travel in March to May or September to November. July and August pass 40C regularly, and if you must come then, go up to the Ourika valley in the foothills where the air is ten degrees cooler.