Saturday Oct 29 - Madrid to Marrakesh
We left Madrid on the 11:45 am flight to Marrakesh - the fight actually left early and we arrive 2 hours later at 12:30pm due to the one hour time change. The entry through C&I was quick and easy even though Iberia only handed out the entry forms as we departed the plane. Our pre-arranged driver met us right outside and off we went in a Mercedes to Kasbah Tamadot - Richard Branson’s luxury riad in foothills of the Altas Mountains.
We were warmly greeted with a tall frosty glass of French Champagne and shown to our room - “Takat” - the least expensive and without a private terrace We spent the rest of the day checking out the grounds and facilities before heading off to an early dinner at 7pm - a Moroccan set menu (a la carte was also available) - it was excellent. As we were both extremely tired we went off to bed early only to find a note in our room that the time went back one hour overnight - great - another hour’s sleep just when we really needed it but it meant the sun would be setting very early from here on - around 6pm.
Sunday/Monday Oct 30/31 - Atlas Mountains to Marrakesh
We only got up at 8:15am in spite of it being 9:15 “old time” but were really rested up. After a delightful breakfast which was part Moroccan and part western we went to the pool to relax, swim, take photos etc - very relaxing. I adopted a new duck ( so far known as “Atlas” but full name still needs a full committee meeting). We had a light lunch at the hotel before taking our car transfer to El Fenn in Marrakesh - we arrived around 2:30pm.
Check-in was a bit rocky and things sort of went down hill from there. At $650 p.n. and the most hip-hop Riad in the Median we were expecting something special. Our room appeared smaller than the advertised 50sm but it was hard to tell as it was so dark inside. There is no mini-bar but they leave a tray with a bottle of water, a bottle of red wine and 2 cokes - all warm of course. I asked for a bucket of ice and diet coke - we got a small container of ice but were told they did not offer diet coke. The light in the wardrobe area was not working - when we called they said they would send someone ASAP - some 6 hours later we are still waiting - you literally cannot see anything in this area particularly once it was dark outside. We had to ask twice to get a laundry list so we could send out some laundry - hope it comes back tomorrow.
After settling in we went to the roof top bar/restaurant for a drink - again a bit of a service disaster - the beer was totally warm and the indifferent waiter said ‘so sorry we had a wedding” WTF ?? When we went to sign the bill they had added a mojito which of course we had not had and again were quite obstinate about it - the waiter simply said “my colleague told me you had one” - we were only there half an hour and there were only a few other people. Dieter then went to reception and complained to the manager - who said she would fix everything. We went our for a quick look around and when we returned for showers there was a large bottle of diet coke in the room !!!
We had dinner at the hotel which was surprisingly pretty good particularly my lamb chops. We went to bed and were in for a bit of a surprise - the noise from the restaurant went on until past 1am in the morning - so loud we could not sleep a wink then the first prayer call came at 4am - total disaster. We both decided on getting up (not waking up as we had been awake all night) to move out to a new hotel that morning even though we had pre-paid for 2 nights. We booked the Four Seasons and told the front desk we were moving out - to cat a long story short they actually gave us a refund.
Our guide for the “day" showed up 9am and we toured the medina and other places until mid-day when we returned to the hotel to get our luggage so we could move to the Four Seasons. Our driver, who was on call, arrived and off we went - the guide however bailed out even though we had paid for a full day. We checked in and had a very nice lunch around the pool. In the afternoon the driver drove us to a famous park then drove around the newly developed areas.
We stayed at the 4S for dinner and crashed into bed very early.
Tuesday Nov 1 - Marrakesh to Quarzazate
We headed off around 9:30 for a long day’s driving and site seeing all the way to Quarzazate where we stayed at the only 5* hotel Berbere Palace - we had a junior suite which was enormous. Our package included dinner so we ate from an a la carte menu and were the only people at dinner - the main course was lamb chops which were really good. All washed down with a bottle of Moroccan red.
On the drive, we passed though the Atlas Mountains across a pass over 2200m and stopped at Alt Ben Haddou, one of the most authentic kasbahs in the region - also the setting for a number of films (Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, Romancing the Tone and the English Patient).
Wednesday Nov 2 - Quarzazate to Tondra Gourge, Efroud, then Erg Chebbi Dunes
We headed off at 9am and started with a quick stop at the kasbah in Quarzazate then onto Tondra Gorge which was quite amazing then onto Efrod where we stopped at our hotel for the following night and transferred to a 4WD for the transfer to our desert camp - the Merzouga Luxury Desert Camps at the Erg Chebbi Dunes.
We arrived at the camp just in time for a sunset camel ride to the top of a sand dune for photos. Then it was six’es around the camp fire and a Moroccan dinner and off to bed early. It was quite cold but not freezing overnight - fortunately we both slept pretty well.
We had brekkie and left before 10am for our "desert experience”.
Thursday Nov 3 - Erg Chebbi Dunes back to Efroud
We drove through the desert on seemingly unmarked tracks seeing many nomad tents - we stopped for lunch at an Oasis with a large ‘homestead’ called Cafe Tisserdmine owned by a British/Australian lady, Karen Hatfield. The lunch was probably one of the best meals we had in Morocco. We arrived at our hotel in Efroud mid-afternoon. The hotel, Palais du Desert, looked very nice and our room which seemed like the Presidential Suite was huge, however, all in all everything was a bit creepy due to the fact we were the only guests in quite a large hotel. Dinner was downright awful - particularly my chicken tagine which (I think) gave me raging diarrhoea the following morning.
Friday Nov 4 - Efroud to Fez
We drove to Fez - a very long drive of 7+ hours - made even longer as I was very much under the weather with diarrhoea. I was ever so happy to finally reach our hotel - a deluxe suite at the Palais Faraj - just what the doctor ordered - give it 10 stars.
Saturday Nov 5 - Fez
We spent the day touring around Fez - very fascinating with a female guide who was very sensitive to our issues with our Marrakesh guide (i.e. too much stopping at shops for hard sell tactics).
Sunday Nov 6 - Fez to Casablanca
We spent the day driving to Casablanca doing ‘drive by’ tours of Meknes and Rabat - both very interesting - fortunately Dieter had the foresight to cancel the side trip to some Roman ruins meaning we reached the Sofitel in Casablanca around 3pm - we managed a whistle stop at the Grand Mosque. We had dinner at the hotel - it was excellent.
Monday Nov 7 - Casablanca to Abu Dhabi
We left early for our 11am flight to Aby Dhabi due to early morning traffic. The flight was excellent which made up for the very mediocre lounge in Casablanca. We arrived at our hotel, The Sofitel on the Corniche around mid-night - we were upgraded to the “presidential suite”. It was then straight to bed.
Tuesday Nov 8 - Abu Dhabi
We only had one full day in AUH so we did a bit of touring around - hit the Marina area and had a stop at the revolving restaurant on top of a tower - cheap at price - 2 diet cokes.
Wednesday Nov 9 - Abu Dhabi to Sydney
We visited the Grand Mosque then the Emirates Place hotel in the morning and early afternoon then headed to the airport early for our 10pm flight. We were settled into the amazing Etihad first class lounge before 7pm where we had a very nice dinner washed down with vintage Bolly, On board our first class apartments on Etihad’s A380 we told our steward that we would not be eating up heading off to sleep - so immediately after take off we had our beds made up and somehow both managed a fairly good sleep. We walked in the door at home around 8:15pm - very tired but happy to be home again.