We arrived late in the evening at the Royal Mansour Meridien Hotel, only to find that, although we were in downtown Casablanca, most businesses were closed and the streets were quiet.  We were pleasantly surprised the next morning when we were greeted by the flurry of activity as the city came to life. We toured Casablanca’s sights and [...]

I can already see that Marrakech has a pulse… it’s an active, bustling city with a personality all its own. Our first morning began with a tour of Marrakech,  considerably more current and modern than the areas we had visited over the past few days. We toured the Koutoubia Mosque and the Bahia Palace, where we had a [...]

3/28/10: We left Erfoud for Ouarzazate, following the caravan route used by generations of Berber traders which, in the past, was a trip that took 152 days by camel caravan from Timbuktu to Fez – so our modern, comfortable bus was much appreciated. We passed through the Anti Atlas mountains on our way, the oldest [...]

This leg of the trip was the “ahh” moment for many of us. After another long day of travel and sightseeing, we reached our hotel, built and decorated much like a kasbah.  The next day, we drove in 4x4s to the Merzouga sand dunes and met our camel caravan.  As each of us climbed atop a camel [...]

We started the day with a walking tour of the Fez medina, the old walled city, with stops in the tannery and the carpet shop. The tannery was particularly interesting (once we were acclimated to the odor), and from a balcony we looked down upon the huge clay vats where, for generations, the workers have cleaned [...]