There’s two fab faces to Marrakech
GONE are the days when Crosby Stills and Nash rode the Marrakech Express, a mind-trip fuelled principally by unusually fat cigarettes which rarely took you further than your imagination’s outer limits.
Today’s journey to the Moroccan city is a more conventional flight.
There are two Marrakechs. One is modern with shopping malls and coffee shops. The other is the one the tourists come for – the souk that starts at Jemaa El Fna square with factory-made sandals and belts which are fun to haggle over.
If the haggling and elbowtugging begin to get you down, you can head to fixed-price shops at Souk Cherifia, where you avoid the junk in favour of sensibly priced high-quality rugs, textiles, spices, kaftans, raffia bags and baskets, and leather everything.
As we’ve done before, we headed out to the Majorelle Gardens. This little oasis of cool and colour is not to be missed if only to enjoy the lemon-yellow and cobalt-blue planters and the gleaming white of the water lillies – all a tribute to French painter Jacques Majorelle’s homage to the plant world.
Jump in a taxi to take in the Koutoubia mosque, a real look-at-me attraction topped with four gleaming copper globes and towering over the town. It remains a place of worship, and non-Muslims are not allowed to enter.
You can duck between both old and new Marrakech without difficulty, and if you fancy a spot more shopping, I’d recommend the less exotic but more rewarding Ensemble Artisanal, a bit like a department store but selling only handicrafts.
This is really kaftan and jewellery heaven. And yes, there are camel rides to be had in the streets and squares, and you can tour by horse and carriage (but you should offer no more than two-thirds of the asking price.)
Marrakech has several good hotels, but we chose to head out of town. It seems pointless journeying so close to the Atlas mountains and then not staying where the air is at its freshest. We chose the Fairmont Royal Palm some seven miles away. This is an elegant five-star hotel and has the one element we always want – space, and more space. It’s not just in the communal areas that you feel you may be the only guests in the hotel – it is also in the rooms. This hotel must also have the largest man-made swimming area on the globe. It’s not a pool, it’s a tiled lake.
A delightful seven-day break. I’d recommend going in April – we had temperatures from the mid-60s to 92F (about 18-33C). It’s bearably cool in the evenings.