On our first exploration of Fez’s medieval medina, my children were quiet and uncertain as they walked through this walled city with its tunnel-like, tangled lanes. The sky was powder blue and the African sun pounded like a drum. As we walked in the shadows through the food souk, kittens darted around our feet, looking for scraps. Live chickens awaited their fate in cages. Eleven-year-old Jack’s hand found mine, holding it tight.
I’d long wanted to bring my children to Morocco to see the chameleons, the donkeys, the snake charmers and twinkling souks.
I had backpacked through Morocco as a student, starting in Fez, which I remembered as confusing and frenetic, full of overloaded donkeys powering through narrow lanes. Fez is not the natural choice for families travelling with kids to Morocco: Marrakech or the beach towns would make more sense. But sometimes, taking the easiest option isn’t as rewarding.
Plus, this is the moment to visit Fez: its medina is being restored to its former splendour, and Air Arabia’s domestic Fez to Marrakech flights, which began last year, make the city more accessible than ever before (Fez to Marrakech by train is eight hours).
I wanted to show Jack and his siblings Gabriel,13, and Valentina, 5, a different world, one more old-fashioned than they would find in Marrakech.
I’d opted to travel independently so we would have the freedom to explore as we chose, but our hotels were so helpful with booking guides, courses and tickets that everything was remarkably easy.
At Palais Amani, our hotel in Fez, the huge front door opened onto a small chamber, hiding the tree-shaded courtyard beyond so that it felt like a secret garden. All day, sparrows fluttered and dipped into the central fountain. Children are detail-oriented: it was the mini white robes, the homemade lemonade and the sumptuous breakfasts served in engraved copperware that signalled to them we were experiencing life in a new realm of homemade luxury.
The hotel organised a guide, Rachid Mritakh, who took us to Fez’s most famous sight, the tanneries, where animal skins are spread out like a giant’s box of watercolours. The skins are cleaned in quicklime and cow urine, then dipped in natural dyes: poppy, indigo or henna.
A cookery course seemed an ideal way to entertain our motley mix of ages as we’re all partial to concoctions in the kitchen. The Fez Cookery School was appealingly relaxed and intimate. After shopping in the food market, we headed to the rooftop, where we found a fully equipped teaching kitchen with views beyond the city.
While Gabriel had started the morning asking “Do I have to cook?”, even he couldn’t help but be charmed by chef Zakia and her assistant, Mehdi, and was soon chopping an onion.
Just as our teachers took the children seriously so, too, did the children raise their own culinary game: vegetable-phobe Jack tasted our tomato and aubergine dish and pronounced it “smashing”.
His favourite recipe was the simplest: slices of orange, soaked in orange-blossom water and dusted with cinnamon and sugar. “Heavenly,” he said. As we sprinkled spices the call to prayer drifted over the city. Later we feasted proudly on the fruits of our labour in the sun-dappled, courtyard restaurant. In the evening we ate at Café Clock, a higgledy-piggledy courtyard-centred restaurant, ostensibly a short walk through the head-spinning medina.
Gabriel tucked into a camel burger as music drifted up from a live band drumming and singing on the ground level.
To our surprise, our five-year-old daughter began to dance, twirling and jumping, and Jack got up too, answering the call of a very different beat to their usual YouTube and Disney soundtracks.
As we left, a woman from the house next door called to us in French, “Wait!” I glanced through her open window, in the pale light, where I saw more women reclining in floor-length patterned robes against patterned-tiled walls. It looked like a painting. The woman offered us trays of homemade biscuits. Travel with kids can be a magic key to the full warmth of local hospitality: I felt an easy connection with local people that was missing when I travelled here before.
Only an hour’s flight away, Marrakech was a different beast to Fez, if from the same stable; buzzier and less traditional but with the same air of mystery and magic. Here our base was the welcoming Riad Farnatchi, a stylish medina mansion, where our suite had stained glass, low tables, a sunken bath and a sun terrace. The courtyard pool was perfect for refreshing overheated children, while the glorious spa, with steam hammam, was ideal for unknotting weary parents. We all adored the food: chicken pastilla (with almonds and wrapped in filo pastry), and fall-apart tender beef and lamb tagines.
We headed into Jemaa el-Fnaa, the palpitating heart of the city, in the evening: a huge square crammed to the brim with mayhem, including musicians, henna tattooists, medicine men proffering ostrich eggs, snake charmers and forlorn monkeys in hats.
Jack learnt to tie a turban, Touareg-style, and we bought a midnight-blue scarf to turn him into a pint-sized Lawrence of Arabia. We all welcomed the tranquillity of a visit to Yves Saint Laurent’s former garden, the Jardin Marjorelle, with its hidden corners, ultramarine pots and flame-orange goldfish flickering in the pond.
Next stop on our week-long trip was Essaouira, 190km south, and this Atlantic-facing city is a different world again. Its name means “little picture” in Arabic, and its medina is painted a nautical blue and white, ringed by a great sandcastle-golden wall. Where Fez offers time travel, and Marrakech is a thrilling, head-spinning tumult, laid-back Essaouira is where the pace slows to an amble, and prices start lower.
We were staying outside the centre of town, about 15 minutes’ drive away in Le Jardin des Douars, an idyll in the parched countryside. In its gardens, bougainvillea poured over terracotta rooftops in femme-fatale pinks and reds, and succulents and cacti spiked patterns against fluffy ferns. Water lilies floated on ponds where turtles glided and frogs ribbited; nearby, tortoises scuttled around the paths. Then there were the iridescent bottle-green waters of the family pool (there’s a separate infinity pool for the child-free).
We finally managed to take the eldest two for a surf lesson at Ocean Vagabond on Essaouira’s long, windswept beach, which is prime surfing and kite-surfing turf (not so much swimming, as it’s too windy). The silky sand, edged by rollicking white-topped sea, had parades of camels lumbering up and down, and ponies cooling down in the surf, ready for rides along the sands.
The enthusiastic teacher managed to coach both boys to stand up on the board and glide in over the waves, to their obvious pride, and we celebrated at Ocean Vagabond’s sun-dappled beach café, a laidback paradise, with skewers and salads served in the shade of argan trees. Gabriel, the teenager, announced with what seemed to be a genuine whiff of enthusiasm: “I’d like to come back to Morocco.” We’d covered so much ground in a week but it had felt remarkably effortless, the rich intensity tempered by the tranquillity of gardens and courtyards. I would take the children back to Morocco: to Essaouira for the breeze, surf and tortoises, to Marrakech for the kid-friendly craziness, and to Fez to be catapulted back in time. – The Telegraph
The essentials
Getting around Once in Morocco, AirArabia (AirArabia.com) flies from Fez to Marrakech from about R400 one way.
The air-conditioned Supratours (supratours.ma/en) bus from Marrakech to Essaouira is about R140 per ticket and takes 2 hours 45 minutes with one stop, while a private minibus transfer costs about R1,800.
Where to stay
Palais Amani (palaisamani.com) starts from around R3,200 per room per night including breakfast and a pull-out bed for a child. Palais Amani also has two-hour cookery classes at Fez Cooking School (fezcookingschool.com).
At Riad Farnatchi (riadfarnatchi.com) rooms are from R4,700 per night including breakfast, with a supplement of about R480 for children between five and 12. The same group runs Wix Squared (wixsquared.com), a tour company which arranges trips around Morocco.
At Le Jardin des Douars in Essaouira (jardindesdouars.com) a family room costs about R2,500 per night including breakfast. – The Telegraph