This September, I was so lucky to be able to visit the country of Morocco alongside my two best friends. We spent 10 days in this unique place, exploring four totally different areas that each had their own cultures and customs!

CHEFCHAOUEN
The first stop on our trip was Chefchaouen, aka The Blue City. As soon as you look at pictures, you’ll understand how this city it got it’s name! We spent a day and half in this little town, exploring every nook and cranny we could find. While the entire place was stunning, we had two favorite highlights. The first was visiting the sweetest orange seller who produced the freshest juice any of us had ever had! And the second was our time at Dar Echchaouen Maison d’Hôtes & Riad, where we stayed. Chefchaouen was lovely first thing in the morning, but it has a small town square with skinny streets and gets busy quickly. Dar Echchaouen was our oasis — it sat high above the city, so we had total quiet and space to ourselves. The gardens were incredible and we had more dessert in the two nights we were there than the rest of our entire trip!

 

FES
Fes was just a short stopover for us before our next part of the trip — Morocco, as you can imagine, is a huge country, but with limited roads, so it can be a long journey from destination to destination. We arrived to Riad Laaroussa, another oasis in a VERY busy city. We were immediately intimated by the seeming maze we had walked into in Fes. Luckily, we had arranged for a food tour to guide us through the best of the best! We tried cactus, local bean soup, fried mashed potatoes (to die for), and so much more. Our guide also had us visit the tanneries (complete with a bit of mint, thankfully!), a hammam, a beauty parlor, and a mosque. Of all the places we visited, this was certainly the best to have a guide — I would not recommend exploring Fes alone unless you are very familiar with the place! The streets are tiny and most are totally covered to the sky, so we completely lost our sense of direction once inside!

 

SAHARA DESERT
Our stop in Fes was to get us one spot closer to our desert tour! As you can imagine, getting out to the desert isn’t easy and took a VERY long time. We arranged for a private transfer through out hotel, Desert Luxury Camp. The Sahara was unlike anywhere I’ve ever been — just sand as far as the eye can see… which might sound lame but was pretty magical. We did SO many fun activities… ATVs, camel rides, and sandboarding… and spent all of our free time in the pool to stay cool from the crazy mid-day heat. We loved listening to the live Berber music at night and staying up late to have wine under the stars.

 

MARRAKECH
After two nights in the desert, we were all looking forward to heading to Marrakech to have a few days in the city to explore! We were also staying at La Mamounia hotel, which we knew would be an experience in and of itself — we had planned for days visiting museums and visiting sights while spending afternoons by the pool and at the spa. Our time in Marrakech started off as planned, but on Friday evening there was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake and we were promptly evacuated from our hotel. Luckily, we were all safe, our things primarily undamaged, and were able to return to our hotel the next day after a night sleeping outside by the pool. Not all of Marrakech faired as well, and the areas closer to the mountains — that we had just driven over days before — were even worse. Our last day or so was fairly somber, as we were all trying to figure out what happened and tell our bodies it was okay to relax. We felt like our trip was cut a bit short and figured it just an excuse to go back one day!