Marrakech, Morocco - Day 5

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

This morning, we said good-bye to the Sahara Desert and made the 10-hour drive back to Marrakech. Andi and I toyed with the idea of stopping to stay somewhere along the way, but he has to work tomorrow which means we need to be in a place with a good internet connection. Also, we fly out of Morocco on Thursday at 2:00pm, so if we stopped somewhere half-way we’d need to pack up again tomorrow and drive for several hours to the airport. We figured it would be simpler to bite the bullet and make the long drive in one shot.

Andi and I talked about this morning how much we loved our time in Morocco. We wish we would have stayed another week or two so we had time to visit the northern cities of Fez, Chefchaoen, and see the coast. We didn’t expect to love this country as much as we have — the people are so kind, the food is amazing, and the cultural differences are so interesting — we’re feeling sad our time in Morocco is coming to an end. I suppose there’s always next time. We hope to visit again someday.

There wasn’t much to see on our drive back to Marrakech that we hadn’t already visited on our way to the desert, so we told Mustafa to keep the car moving. We stopped for lunch in the city of Ouarzazate at a restaurant & hotel called Les Jardins de Ouarzazate. It was a nice place with a big outdoor patio. We ordered two plates of chicken skewers, a salad, and a bowl of Moroccan soup to share. We also picked up Aden’s baseball cap that he’d left in the private car we took from Marrakech to Skoura last Friday. The driver left it at this hotel/restaurant so we could reclaim it on our way back to Marrakech.

By the time we made it to Marrakech, it was 6:00pm. Our driver, Mustafa, offered to take us to the grocery store to get some food before he dropped us off at our rented airbnb apartment, but we declined. Since we’d only be in Marrakech for one day, Andi and I figured we’d just order take-out or eat in restaurants around the city.

This time in Marrakech, we opted to stay outside of the Medina (old town) in an apartment closer to the airport. We felt like we saw all the parts of the Medina and Jemaa el Fnaa Square that we wanted to experience during our first visit to Marrakech last week, and it was quite a bit cheaper to stay in the more modern part of the city. The Medina is a wonderful world of craziness with its maze of narrow alleyways, smells of incense and spices, and the Muslim call to prayer broadcasting five times a day. We loved every minute of it when we stayed at Riad Azoulay, but tomorrow we just need a quiet place to do school, work, and laundry.

We rented an apartment on Airbnb for two nights which has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and kitchen. The apartment is located in a gated golf community with a shared pool area. Most important to us is the fact that the apartment has a washing machine. We are in desperate need of laundry after living out of our backpacks the past week.

The best part about staying in big cities is having access to all the different restaurants and delivery services. We live in a small, rural town in Wisconsin so this is such a treat for us. After a long day of travel, the last thing we felt like doing was going out for dinner, so Andi ordered take-out from a burger restaurant and a greek restaurant for our meals tonight. Within 30 minutes, two delivery drivers on motorbikes showed up outside our apartment building with our food.

The four of us ate dinner, took showers, and settled in for the night. Tomorrow is a work & school day for all of us, plus Andi promised the kids we’d take them to the mall in Marrakech for an activity of their choice. The mall we stopped at in Marrakech last week was really nice, and the kids have been begging to go back. One more day in Marrakech, then we head off to our next destination.