The mercury is shooting up to 33°C in Toronto today. What better time to begin our new series on the pools we daydream about all summer. Where: La Sultana Marrakech, Morocco Why: Sitting by a pool and staring at a brick wall isn’t usually that enticing. But when the wall in question is a Gothic-arched […]
The Moroccan culinary alphabet only has about 10 letters. But what it lacks in depth and diversity it makes up for in down-to-earth-made-with-love deliciousness. Where: Someone’s home in the small town of M’Hamid, where the road ends and the Sahara Desert properly begins. What: Chicken tajine. The word tajine refers to the round earthenware dish (with distinctive conical top), the […]
Fez. You might love it or hate it, but indifference is unlikely. You’ve never seen a place like Fez. Think of the medina as one huge treasure-hunt, a life-size labyrinth to lose yourself in, and don’t venture in without a ball of string. Few places are so difficult to understand and yet able to get […]
Ten years ago you had to look pretty hard to find a fantastic place to stay in Marrakech. Sure there was a grand dame (that would be La Mamounia), but mostly it was a city of damsels in distress—long-in-the-tooth-and-never-that-beautiful-in the-first-place sort of places. And then began the riad renaissance, a remarkable era of restoration in […]
Close your eyes (enough to allow for some mental visualization, but not so much that you can’t read this). Now, imagine that you’re standing on an 18th century rampart overlooking the sea. The air is humid and heavy, the sun warm like a pancake on your forehead. Seagulls are swooping around, making noise, in their […]
If you’re going to build a hotel out of mud and straw, and place it on the far side of nowhere, then it had best be good. If you’re going to officially nickname it a ‘house of dreams’ and charge a thousand Euros a night, then it had best be phenomenal. Dar Ahlam, hidden in […]
P.T. Barnum may have had “The Greatest Show on Earth”, but that was over 100 years ago. And you had to pay for it. These days, the finest, funnest, freakiest show we know happens every day in Marrakech’s Djemaa el Fna square. And it’s free. If Morocco is a target for the traveller craving the […]
Lodge-to-lodge trekking out of the Kasbah du Toubkal gives you access to some of the most beautiful parts of the Atlas, remote rural communities, and sweeping other-worldly landscapes. The well-known Kasbah du Toubkal has been doing up lodges, scattered in the hills and valleys around Imlil, which the lodge uses to put together multi-day treks beginning and […]
When Marrakech begins to overwhelm you with its smells and persistant sales pitches, click your heels three times and chant “there’s no place like Toubkal. There’s no place like Toubkal.” In a flash (relatively speaking—a 45 minute drive to be more precise) you will find yourself in a mountain retreat where the air is fresh, […]