We'd just finished three months with Boundless Life in Portugal, and we weren't ready to go back to the States. I wanted to see Casablanca because of the movie (kind of like how I wanted to visit Isle of Skye because of James Bond). So we booked a week in Morocco with some of our Boundless friends.
The original plan was a few days in Casablanca, a few in Marrakech. Then we found a riad in Marrakech for the whole week, two blocks from the souks, and scrapped Casablanca entirely. Begrudgingly, it was the best decision we made.
The souks
The main square has cobra charmers, juice carts, fruit vendors, and the like. We went there almost every day for fresh juice, before hitting our favorite coffee shop. The place is enormous and chaotic and somehow it all works.
Calvin was 8. Millie was 3. Carol wore Millie the entire time because you cannot push a stroller through those markets. The alleys are narrow, uneven, packed with people and motorbikes. It's a logistics problem with no clean solution – you just commit and walk.
The shopkeepers love kids. They give them little freebies. Half-made chess pieces, scraps from woodworking. Calvin filled his pockets with bits and bobs from the shops. It felt genuine. The vendors are obviously trying to get you into their shop, but when they're handing the kids trinkets, the sales pressure disappears and you're just watching a grown man hand your son a carved knight with a chipped ear.
I fell in love with the brass. Specifically three brass mirrors that now hang inside Coletta, so there's a little piece of Marrakech rolling around in our Airstream. I also bought a small brass camel that I still carry in my travel kit. Then the kids decided we needed a family of camels, so we bought three. The second set of three are beautiful and will rest on a bookshelf or mantle at some point down the road. My original one... it's a bit boxier and uglier than the others. Call it "authentic". It sits on Coletta's dashboard now, rattling its way across every state line.
We went through the scarf market and each picked a shemagh. Calvin chose a deep royal blue. Millie got purple. I got one that's black and green (typical). The kids wear and play dress up with theirs constantly – I found Calvin just this morning wrapped up in it under his blankets. Carol calls mine my "emotional support scarf." The kids also got traditional Moroccan robes. They call them pajamas, and will be perfect additions to the costume collection for years to come.
The cultural stuff they don't warn you about
Millie sucks her left thumb. Specifically her left thumb, which matters in Morocco because the left hand is reserved for, let's say, sanitary purposes. Women would walk by and pull Millie's thumb out of her mouth. Not meanly, just matter-of-factly. We had to explain to a three-year-old why strangers were touching her hand, which is a conversation nobody prepares you for.
I tried on a shirt at one shop. The guy was friendly. "You look great, you look great." I looked at Carol. Carol said no. The shopkeeper said, "In Morocco, the man is the boss." I told him that wasn't going to work in my family, and we left. We walked past his shop probably five more times that week, and every time, he and his friend heckled us about it. As the visitor to another country and culture, you just gotta let stuff like that go.
I still want to buy a riad someday. But that moment was a useful reminder that we were visitors in a place with fundamentally different cultural assumptions about gender. Marrakech has a modern side with teenage girls in crop tops, but they're the minority. The old city and the new city can be two very different worlds.
Camels, dinner, and an audience of eight
We did a camel ride out to a Berber dinner and entertainment in the desert. The venue could have held a hundred people. There were eight of us: our family, one other Boundless Life family, one solo traveler, and two women. More employees than guests.
There was music, dancing, the full production. No alcohol because of course there's no drinking. We drank tea instead. This is where Calvin fell in love with Moroccan mint tea. Here's hoping we can replicate it at home! But I suspect that four tablespoons of sugar in any hot liquid would suffice.
The camels were the highlight. Carol got on one with Millie strapped to her front. Meanwhile, my camel incessently tried to eat Carol's foot. It was funnier to some than others. Calvin rode with me and was quiet and focused the whole time, which is his version of loving something.
The food
Tagine. That's the answer to "what did you eat in Morocco" and it's enough. It's a vegtable-heavy, slow-cooked stew. We got to see how locals actually prepare it. Our walking guide showed us a place below the bathhouses where a fire runs underneath the building all day. People would drop off their tagine pot in the morning on their way to work in the souks, leave it in the coals while the bathhouses heated, and pick it up on their way home. Community slow cooker. Brilliant!
There's a Marrakech-specific variation called tanjia, which is fantastically meat-heavy. They call it the "bachelor's dish" – perfect! We also found an incredible coffee shop in the souks, which had both amazing drinks for eveyone (kids' hot chocolate isn't always on the menu in these places) and amazing ambiance for family portraits.
Morocco's history of French occupation menas that French is still the language of commerce here. It's interesting to hear the shop owners switch between French with customers and Arabic with one another. Oddly, after three months failing to speak Portuguese in Portugal, I felt more comfortable engaging in broken French and Arabic than I ever did in Lisbon. C'est la vie.
As usual, the kids survived on fries. Calvin and I went out one night to get pizza around the corner from the riad. He of course sipped his mint tea while we played cards and waited. The riad itself had a woman who made us breakfast every morning. She'd set out a carafe of juice, assorted jams, and these incredible things they called pancakes. They're somewhere between a pancake and naan. One side is covered in air bubbles, which makes them fluffy. You put jam on them and they disappear in about four seconds.
Yves Saint Laurent's gardens
We ventured to the new side of town for the Majorelle Garden, originally owned by Yves Saint Laurent. Blues and greens everywhere, cactus gardens, quiet paths. The contrast with the souks is jarring. The new side of Marrakech has resorts, flashy cars, and the kind of wealth display you'd associate with somewhere like Dubai. We largely stuck to the old side for the rest of the trip.
Why we'll go back
A week wasn't enough. It never is with places that actually challenge you. Morocco doesn't let you be a passive tourist. You're negotiating, navigating, adapting, and occasionally getting heckled by a shopkeeper with a great memory.
Calvin started asking bigger questions about how people live in different parts of the world. Millie expanded her vocabulary by about twenty words, including "camel" in three languages. And I came home with a brass camel in my pocket and three mirrors in the Airstream that catch the light in a way that makes me think of those markets every single time.
If you're thinking about taking kids to Marrakech: do it. Book a riad in the old city. Accept that the stroller stays home. Bring comfortable shoes and an open mind, and be ready for the left-hand conversation sooner than you think.
We're going back. Longer next time. With more room in the suitcase for brass.
