Northern Morocco Trip

Morocco | Jun 16 - Jun 21, 2025

I travelled to Morocco with my wife and 11 year old son. On our trip to Morocco, we travelled from Casablanca to Rabat, Chefchaouen, Volubilis, Meknes, Fes and returned to Casablanca for our flight home. We had a 5 day itinerary that was well planned by the travel agency. The travel agency organized the private driver, hotels and the private guides. Overall, it was an interesting cultural experience (coming from US) to see an Islamic country and places that have been around for much longer than the USA.

For me the top 5 sights: the variety of Riads we stayed in to understand what is actually inside a traditional islamic home, the Challah (old fortress with Roman and Islamic ruins), Volubilis, Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail in Meknes (restored version of a Islamic Palace which was commonly seen in the palace ruins in southern Spain), and Fes Medina, which really gave engrained what life is/was like in the Moroccan Medinas.

A few positives:
- We stay in Riads for most nights. This was a very unique opportunity to see what it is like inside the "wealthy" homes. Both Riad Kalaa (Rabat) and Riad Lina (Chefchaouen) were nice.
- The breakfast at Riad Kalaa was by far the best.
- There was a reservable pool in Riad Lina that was magical.
- We wanted to buy local handicrafts and the local guides provided to us were knowledgeable about the best place to go (i.e. not the tourist locations). For example, in Chefchaouen, Bilal took us to a consignment store to find a Berber rug. In Fes, Cherif took us to a back back back alley in the Fes souks to get high quality Argan oil.
- Our driver, Reda, was very professional, which included 1) (most important) he was polite and respectful, 2) timely / almost always early), 3) knew where he was going and how long it would take, 4) was a safe driver following rules of the road. Reda was also able to schedule some things last minute, like a dinner and a traditional Moroccan show in Fes. This was a nice surprise for us.

A few negatives:
- Our itinerary was tight and the travel between locations were 3-5 hours each. Using a car was the only way to travel between the cities. On one hand, we could have extended stay in each location to break up the driving, but there isn't much to do in each location, so I think we would have gotten restless. Simply a tradeoff and probably I would do it this way again if I were to repeat.
- Riad Salam in Fes was by far the prettiest (16 years of restoration), but also the least comfortable. During our trip (we travelled in Spain prior to the trip to Morocco), we stay in 7 hotels; Riad Salam, was by far the the least comfortable. The mattress was extremely firm, the towels were lower quality than Amazon Basics. The A/C was not functioning correctly. And the breakfast was the worst out of the three Riads - they prioritized quantity over quality. I would not recommend staying there.
- The Hassan II mosque in Casablanca is about the only thing to do in in the city. Certainly interesting for a non-muslim to go into a practicing mosque. However, the guided tour was not very good (note that they were provided by the site rather than someone picked by tour agency).

Final Note: My rating for the local specialist covers all the people we worked with. Ali was only involved in planning. We had a operations person assigned (Said), but we never needed to talk with him. Reda was our only point of contact through out the trip.