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Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech. Wonderful for a fourteen year old, a lot for a four year old, and that gap is the whole planning problem
Morocco — Everything We Know
“Everyone books Marrakech. Half of them should have booked somewhere quieter and driven in for the day.”
I have not been to Morocco with my children, so this page is what I know as an advisor rather than what I remember as a mother. I am telling you that up front because it changes how you should read the age advice further down. It is built from what clients report back, not from a week I spent there with a nine year old on my hip.
What I hear most often is a version of the same sentence. Marrakech was incredible and it was also too much. The medina is a genuine maze, the souks are dense and dark and hot, the pressure to buy is constant, and a small child in a stroller is simply not going to work in there. None of that means avoid Morocco. It means stop treating Marrakech as the default base just because it has the cheap flights.
The families who come home glowing are usually the ones who slept somewhere calm. A riad in a quieter quarter, or Essaouira on the coast, or a kasbah in the Atlas foothills, and they visited the noise instead of living in it.
Morocco Place by Place
Eight places worth naming. Most first trips use three of them. The mistake is trying to use six.
Marrakech
Fes
Chefchaouen
Sahara
Essaouira
Casablanca
Atlas Mountains
Tangier
Where to Base, and Why It Is Usually Not the Medina
This is the decision that determines whether your family enjoys Morocco. Everything else is detail.
The Marrakech medina is overwhelming for young children and there is no shame in that. Alleys barely wide enough for two people, mopeds coming through them at speed, donkey carts, no street signs, and a level of sensory input that flattens most adults by hour two. Children under about six find it frightening rather than exciting. Older ones love it.
The Palmeraie and the Hivernage are the family compromise in Marrakech. A resort with a pool and a garden, fifteen or twenty minutes from the square by taxi. You go into the medina in the late afternoon, eat, and leave. Everyone sleeps.
Essaouira is the calm alternative and it is underrated. Two and a half hours from Marrakech on a good road. Atlantic wind, a walkable whitewashed medina about a tenth the intensity of Marrakech, a huge beach, camel rides on the sand, fresh fish grilled at the port. Families with children under eight are often happier basing here entirely.
The Atlas foothills are an hour from the airport and feel like another country. Imlil and the Ourika valley. Walking, mule rides, cool air in summer, kasbah hotels with pools looking at real mountains. This is my favourite place to put a family that wants Morocco without a crowd.
The erg at Merzouga. Getting here from Marrakech is nine or ten hours in a vehicle and people book it as if it were an afternoon
Riads or Hotels
A riad is a traditional house built inward around a courtyard, usually four to eight rooms, often with a roof terrace. They are beautiful and they are the reason half the photographs of Morocco look the way they do. They are also not automatically the right call with children.
What a riad gives you. Character, a courtyard your kids can be loud in, breakfast on the roof, a host who will arrange everything, and a location deep inside the old city. Prices are often startlingly reasonable for a whole family.
What it costs you. Stairs, and lots of them, usually steep with open sides. Rooms that open onto a shared courtyard, so noise carries and a toddler bedtime is public. Rarely a pool, and if there is one it is a cold plunge. No lift, and a taxi cannot reach the door, so you walk the last five or ten minutes with your bags.
My rule of thumb. Under five, book the hotel with the pool. Five to ten, split the trip, two nights in a riad and the rest somewhere with a garden. Over ten, book the riad and enjoy it, they will remember the roof terrace far longer than a pool.
Ask two questions before booking any riad. How many steps from the nearest vehicle access, and does the room you are being sold have a door that closes onto a corridor rather than straight onto the courtyard. Those two answers predict almost everything.
The Sahara Overnight Is a Long Drive and People Underestimate It
The picture is a camp of white tents under the stars on an enormous orange dune. The picture is real. What the picture does not show is the vehicle.
Marrakech to Merzouga is nine to ten hours each way. Over the Tizi n’Tichka pass, which is beautiful and full of switchbacks, then across hammada desert that is flat and brown for hours. The standard tour sells it as three days and two nights. That is two very long driving days for one night on the sand.
The pass makes people carsick. Not sometimes. Regularly. If anyone in your family is prone to it, medicate before you leave, not when it starts.
Zagora is closer and it is not the same. Zagora is around seven hours from Marrakech and the dunes there are small. Merzouga is where the enormous erg is. If you want the photograph, you have to do the distance. If you cannot face it, fly Marrakech to Errachidia or Ouarzazate and drive the shorter leg.
Is it worth it with kids. Yes, from about eight. A camel at sunset, sandboarding down a dune, drummers around a fire, and a sky with no light pollution in it. Children who are old enough to sit out a long drive get one of the best nights of their childhood. Under eight, do the Agafay stony desert an hour from Marrakech instead and be honest with yourself that it is a substitute.
Fes or Marrakech
People ask this constantly and the honest answer is that they are not competing for the same slot.
Marrakech is the show. The square, the gardens, the food stalls, the day trips, the hotels, the flights. It is easier, more geared to visitors, and more comfortable. It is also the one where you are most obviously a customer.
Fes is the real thing. The oldest continuously inhabited medina in the world, nine thousand alleys, still a working city rather than a stage set. The tanneries, the fondouks, the metalworkers. It is harder, less polished, more rewarding, and considerably more disorienting. You will want a guide for at least the first half day and I would not skip that.
With children under ten, Marrakech. With teenagers, or with anyone who has already done a North African city and wants the deeper version, Fes. With ten days, both, with Chefchaouen in between, because a blue mountain town after two intense medinas is exactly the right pace.
Food
Moroccan food is one of the easiest cuisines in the world to travel with children in. Sweet rather than hot, slow cooked, and built around bread. Two things I could not photograph honestly but you should order anyway. Harira is a tomato, lentil and chickpea soup eaten to break the fast in Ramadan and sold year round for pennies. Msemen is a flaky square pancake folded and fried, served with honey at breakfast, and it is the thing your kids will ask for every morning.
The road over the Atlas. Spectacular, slow, and the reason a two hour drive on the map takes four
Getting Around
Self driving is genuinely fine outside the cities. Roads are good, signage is in Arabic and French, and the countryside is easy. City driving is not fine. Park the car and use taxis in Marrakech and Fes. Police checkpoints are frequent, routine and polite. Slow down, smile, carry your documents.
A car with a driver costs little more than a rental. Roughly a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a day for a vehicle, fuel and a driver who knows where the good lunch stop is. For a family covering distance this is the easy answer and it removes the checkpoint and parking questions entirely.
The train is excellent and the high speed line is a genuine surprise. Al Boraq runs Tangier to Casablanca in a bit over two hours at two hundred miles an hour. Regular ONCF trains link Casablanca, Rabat, Fes and Marrakech comfortably and cheaply. There is no train to Essaouira or the desert.
CTM and Supratours buses are the way to Essaouira and Chefchaouen. Air conditioned, assigned seats, book ahead online. Marrakech to Essaouira is about three hours and costs less than lunch.
Money and Practical Basics
The dirham is a closed currency. You cannot buy it before you arrive and you are not supposed to take much out. Withdraw at the airport ATM on arrival. Cards work in hotels and restaurants that cater to visitors, and nowhere else. The souk is cash.
No visa for Americans, Canadians, Brits or the EU for stays up to ninety days. Passport valid six months. That is the whole story, which makes Morocco one of the simplest long haul entries there is.
French is more useful than English. Arabic and Amazigh are the languages of the country, French is the language of business and tourism, and English is patchy outside Marrakech. A dozen words of French will change your trip. Your children learning shukran and merci will change it more.
Haggling is expected and it is not hostile. Start around a third, settle near half, and walk away if it stops being fun. If you do not want to buy, do not pick it up. Handling the item is read as the opening bid.
When to Go
March to May is the best window
Wildflowers in the Atlas, comfortable heat in Marrakech, the desert still pleasant at night. Easter is busy and priced up. Late April is close to perfect.
September to November is nearly as good
The heat breaks, the coast is still swimmable, and the desert is at its best. October is my quiet favourite.
July and August are brutal inland
Marrakech regularly hits a hundred and ten. Fes is worse because there is no breeze in the medina. If summer is your only window, base in Essaouira, where the Atlantic keeps it in the seventies, and treat inland as a day trip you leave early for.
One more thing to check. Ramadan moves each year, and during it many restaurants in the medinas close during daylight and the country runs on a different rhythm. It is a fascinating time to visit as an adult and a frustrating one with hungry children at lunchtime. Look up the dates before you book.
Doing It With Children
There is no age floor, but there is an itinerary floor. Morocco works with a three year old if you base on the coast or in the mountains and do very little. It does not work with a three year old if you have booked a medina riad and a desert overnight. The country is not the problem, the plan is.
Leave the stroller at home. Cobbles, steps, crowds, alleys. A carrier for the little ones and shoes for everyone else. This is the single most common piece of feedback I get.
Moroccans adore children and it is not performative. Your kids will be given sweets, offered mint tea, invited behind counters. Shopkeepers who would work hard on you will simply be kind to them. It is one of the loveliest things about travelling there as a family.
Skip the snake charmers and the chained monkeys in the square. Photograph either and you will be charged, and the animals are not well kept. Tell the kids beforehand so it is a decision you made together rather than a fight in the middle of Jemaa el Fna.
Who Morocco Suits, and Who Should Skip It
Go if you want a country that feels genuinely far from home without a punishing flight. From the east coast of the United States it is roughly seven hours, the same as Lisbon, and from Europe it is under three. Go if you want your children to hear a call to prayer, eat with their hands, ride a camel and haggle for a lamp, all in one week. Go if value matters, because your money goes a very long way here.
Skip it if you need everything to be smooth. Morocco is warm and it is also insistent. Skip it if you are travelling with a child who finds crowds and noise genuinely distressing, unless you build the whole trip around Essaouira and the mountains. Skip the desert overnight if anyone gets carsick or is under about eight. And skip July and August inland, no exceptions.
Compared to its neighbours, Morocco is the easy entry point to North Africa and Egypt is the big one. Egypt has the monuments that stop a child in their tracks. Morocco has the daily life, the food and the landscape variety, and it is far more forgiving of a family that wants to move slowly. If you have never travelled in the region, start here.
Things That Surprise First Timers
It snows. The High Atlas holds snow into spring and there is a small ski resort at Oukaimeden. People picture Morocco as uniformly hot desert and then find themselves cold in a mountain guesthouse in March.
Ouarzazate is a film town. Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia and Game of Thrones were all shot around Ait Ben Haddou, and the studios run tours. It is a very easy win with teenagers on the way to the desert.
The hammam is a real experience and it is not a spa. Public ones are steam, black soap and a vigorous scrub from a stranger. Hotel versions are gentler. Older children find it hilarious. Nobody comes out neutral.
Non Muslims cannot enter most mosques. The Hassan II in Casablanca is the famous exception and it is worth building a day around. Elsewhere you admire the minaret from outside, which surprises people who assumed otherwise.
Pairs Well With
Two and a half hours from Marrakech to Lisbon. A week of Morocco followed by a week of the Algarve is one of the easiest and best value two country trips out of Europe.
The ferry from Tangier to Tarifa takes an hour. Two continents in one morning is a genuinely brilliant thing to do with children who are old enough to understand what just happened.
The continent hub, with every African guide we have built and the questions worth answering before you choose a country.
More Africa Guides
The other African countries we have written up so far. More are coming as we build them.
