48 Hours in Marrakesh, Morocco: Best Things to Do 🇲🇦

Welcome to Marrakech, Morocco. Known for its warm hospitality and flavorful cuisine, Marrakech is one of North Africa's most captivating cities. The bustling souks are filled with towers, handcrafted goods, aromatic spices, and eye-catching textiles. A mesmerizing place where travelers can haggle the price for all kinds of trinkets and treasures. It's easy to get lost in the smells, the sounds, and the maze-like alleyways of the ancient Medina. But perhaps getting lost in a trance is what Marrakech is all about. For our time in Marrakech, we've decided to stay at a Riyadh, which is a traditional Moroccan guest house. And when we arrived, we were greeted with some Moroccan mint tea. And the concept of this place is kind of like my house is your house. So if I want to go downstairs and take a nap in the lobby, well, I guess they don't call it a lobby here. It'd be the living room. I can do that. And I also go into the dining room or the rooftop terrace and really just enjoy everywhere that this place has to offer. And this stay also includes a very extravagant breakfast, which we are about to go and enjoy. I'm excited to see what they serve for the first meal of the day. And so with all that said, let's go and eat. So this morning, we decided we wanted to explore some souks and kind of scout out what we want to buy while we're here in Morocco. And there are so many amazing things you can pick up. And we decided to wake up early because it's a lot less crowded and the shops are just opening up. Chad was very adamant about us waking up early. And I'm glad he did push for it because there have been very few crowds and it's just been comfortable walking around and being able to take your time looking at each item. But as we were walking through, it started with a pretty big open street with lots of finished products and goods and sandals, bags, all sorts of different things you can get. Mosaics, towers of brightly colored powders. Yes, that's true. And as we were walking through, it starts to get more narrow like the street does. And it goes off into multiple ways. But we decided to go down this one street while we just happen to go down this one street that was full of all the raw products. So like the leather sewing machines and all of these workers basically creating the things that we're seeing. I could not believe how quickly this probably teenage boy was sewing these sandals and he is just whipping it out one after the other. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, such talent, such skill. So right now we're shopping for a poof and this is hilarious. I feel very stupid for even thinking this, but when we were walking around, I thought these were two completely different products. I thought they were selling big leather bowls, you know, for blankets, for your clothes. And then they were selling poofs separately, but it turns out they're the same thing. You just have to pop this one out and stuff it with stuff. I was just getting so confused because they're like, no, it's the same thing. I'm like, how is it the same thing? They're like, just pop it out. So yeah, that was the thing that I learned today in Marrakesh. I just want to say that I knew what they were, but Claire did not. Yes, he wants to make that clear. I just bought a little poof from my favorite shop owner here. Here is the card. Welcome, my friend. Welcome to Morocco in Marrakesh. If you want something, welcome. Anytime. Oh my gosh, they get prettier and prettier. This one is saffron and blue indigo. And the black from walnut. And you can use it both sides as well. Oh, reversible. Yes, reversible. Summer side and winter side. Yeah. So this is winter? Yeah, this is winter. This is more summer. These are all beautiful. How much for all? So one of the things I've been super excited about in Morocco is just their beautiful textiles. We've gotten to learn about all the different, not all, but some of the different techniques that are being showcased on the rugs that we're looking at. Pretty much all of the rugs here are coming from tribes throughout Morocco, the Berber tribes, and each one has different styles and they're dyeing it using different techniques. It's all natural dyes and they use different plants, saffron, indigo, flowers, just all sorts of different things to create these vibrant hues that you see. And me, having gone through a whole four years of studying fibers and textiles, I have such a great appreciation for all the labor that went into making these rugs. Wow, I just can't believe how many different patterns there are. Yeah. And we are having a very hard time choosing which ones we want, which ones we want to give to friends. There's so many options. After a very eventful morning wandering around the souks, we've moved on to the highlight of our day. When we knew that we were coming to Morocco, the number one activity that I knew I wanted to do was to make something with my hands and they have a number of different workshops. I was looking through, they had some mosaic tile making workshops, they had pottery workshops, but I knew that since we were traveling with carry-ons, it had to be something that I could smash down and pack away. And so we decided to go for a babouche making workshop, which are those little Moroccan slippers that you see all around the Medina, and we're going to make our own. It's going to fit perfectly on our feet. I'm so excited to dive into shoe making. I've never made a shoe before and after walking around the souks and seeing all the labor that goes into making a single pair, I am very happy to be partaking in it. Oh, I look so sophisticated. This one feels really good. Yeah, I think this one, this one's much better. So the first thing we get to do is choose the shape of the shoe. We can either go with the traditional Arabic pointy top or we can go with the rounded, more modern take. And this is actually what the Berber people prefer because the pointiness is harder for them to walk through the dunes, walk through the mountains with. And I think we're actually going to go with the traditional pointy shape because I don't know, I put, I slid my foot in and it felt great and I actually think I could run in this pointy shape. So now we are going to head over to the workshop and get started. Oh, that's pretty too though, like a brown, yeah. I feel like Cinderella with like a glass slipper, but it's actually just a beautiful leather baboosh. I'll come on your side. Okay. You're in the middle. In the middle, okay, okay. Can I hold this? Yes, yes. You want to hover the t-shirt? One, two, three. Perfect, thank you very much. We just finished our baboosh making workshop and this is the final product. I cannot express how soft they are. They are made from sheepskin leather and Chad went with this beautiful olive green. I went with a more natural brown. The entire workshop was just so hands-on, obviously, but it was really cool to be able to watch Yousef and to learn about the technique behind making these shoes and how he really puts value into making things that last a very long time and so he was saying like these could last up to 15 years and I think that's incredible. We're for sure gonna be wearing them around the house, you know, tapping our little pointed toes together. It's gonna be now a part of our work uniform. We're gonna wake up, slide these bad boys on and get to the office. So we booked this experience with Get Your Guide and in case you don't know who Get Your Guide is, they're the leading online travel experience platform with more than 110,000 curated things to do in 150 countries from exclusive attractions to off-the-beaten-path gems. Everything you could possibly need is in their app on your phone. This includes the tickets, the vouchers, the meeting point. They allow cancellation up to 24 hours before the start of your experience or tour, which is great for us because it allows us a lot of flexibility. We've been using Get Your Guide for the past, what, three, four years? We absolutely love them. They just allow us to have so many unique, unforgettable experiences like making babooshes with a pro shoemaker and of course, if you aren't into hands-on experiences or guided tours, they also offer skip the line tickets and so you can surpass all the crowds and go straight into wherever you're trying to go. Thank you so much to Get Your Guide for supporting what we do and with all that said, I think we're gonna head to dinner. I said I feel like Lord Barclad. I don't know what I expected those shoes to look like on chat but they're cracking me up. It is so funny. They actually remind me of the caterpillar that's in Alice in Wonderland, the one that's like smoking the hookah. Oh my gosh, I feel like we're gonna be wearing these around the house. I'm just gonna be giggling away. Okay, I need to try mine on. Fashion show. That's the look. They look very nice on you. Come into the frame, Chad. Don't be shy. So pointy. Touch your toes. Yay! Yay, Morocco! When our guests come to our house, we're gonna open the door wearing these. Welcome! I can't get up. Welcome. My feet are so white. Oh wow, this smells amazing. Oh my goodness. Wow. Thank you. For dinner, we've come to a very famous bistro that was quite hidden inside of the medina and the whole ambiance of this place is just absolutely wonderful. There's gonna be live music playing in a little bit and we have ordered two beautiful entrees. They're traditional Moroccan dishes. I went with the beef tangia and he brought over this little clay pot and waved it in my face and it smelled so aromatic and it also came with a small bowl of veggies and then Chad decided to go with the lamb tagine and that is going to be our first tagine here in Morocco. I'm sure we're gonna be eating so much more of it but very excited to be here. Excited for the live music and can't wait to dig in. I didn't get a single shot of us eating those entrees because they were so good and we had so much fun eating those foods that we had to get dessert. Always saving room for dessert. You can probably hear the jazz band popping off behind me but here we have baguere which is a Marrakech specialty. It is also known as the 1,000 hole pancake because the pancakes themselves have so many little holes from all the bubbles that form on the top and then it is browned with butter and an orange blossom syrup and it also came with three scoops of this mystery ice cream here. Good morning from Marrakech, Morocco and one of the reasons you can tell that we are in Marrakech is behind me is Qutubia which is a minaret that was built all the way back in 1147 when construction started. The name Qutubia comes from an Arabic word that's similar meaning bookstore because way back when apparently down here they had all these souks selling a lot of different books. I love that image of there just being all of these old documents being traded around from across the land. So one reason I wanted to stop at this minaret was actually because we saw it on our drive into Marrakech and I immediately just thought it was such a beautiful tower. I think it's such a nice height. You can look at it very easily and you can see it from pretty much anywhere in the city because the city has a little bit lower of a roof line throughout it and on the top there's this really nice green tilework design. I believe it's green. Claire can confirm that it is green and yeah I just think it's a beautiful tower. It looks like they're doing some more construction on it just to maybe upkeep it since it's so historic but Claire and I are actually going to be taking it a little bit easier today. We're going to walk over to a nearby park and go read some books. For the last hour and a half we've been sitting on this tile bench just reading our books and listening to the sound of birds chirping all around us and the continuous walla of people speaking Arabic, French and Spanish and I've just been soaking in the serenity that this park surely does have but something that I did want to note is that without the sun it gets remarkably cool during the day. Like I have some slight goose bumps all over my body just because sitting on this tile it's very cooling and there's just a slight breeze that continues to flow throughout the trees of this park and so it's kind of nice being able to experience both the sunny weather that we had yesterday and then now like a cloudy gloomy day and just feeling the drastic difference between the heat from yesterday and the cooler temperatures today. But now that we are all relaxed and loose as can be we are going to head back into the hustle and bustle of the medina and capture the famous square that's right in the heart of it and I think that's just going to wake us right back up get us back on the edge of our seats and yeah, I don't know, I have no idea what we're going to experience there but just walking through there over the last couple of days I've seen some monkeys, I've seen snakes I've seen lots and lots of vendors trying to sell us goods Yeah, juices, all sorts of different things. Which is probably the noisiest and most chaotic part of Marrakech there's so many vendors just selling everything you could possibly think of and it's in these moments where I feel like I'm just such a target for these vendors to like reach out and try to get my attention I'm easily persuaded and also I just, I don't know it's obviously my parents, they know that I'm some kind of Asian they want to figure out which one it is so they're saying hello to me in Chinese, Japanese, Korean all the countries, all the languages but I never give them the pleasure of actually finding out what kind of Asian person I am especially the fruit juice people they've been trying to get us to buy, you know, a cup of juice but I don't know if I want juice right now we're trying to figure out what the best price is because haggling is just such a big part of our time here in Marrakech we did it back in the souks we did it while we were trying to buy a rug you just never know if you're getting the right deal I want a juice and I have 10 dirham to spend so let's go find a juice vendor all right, who has the freshest juice? I'm going to look at their fruit, see who has good-looking fruit what about these guys? because they're not, I like the ones that don't go up thank you sir, I got you sorry welcome to Africa I got you where are you from? he's drink free what is this? it's mixed okay, okay, I only have 10 10, okay, no problem what do you have for 10? 10 is mixed, it's more oh that is good welcome to Africa thank you very much wow, and we got a free sample this was one dollar which is probably way overpriced but I'm fine with it look what I found in the souk it's a little babush and this is going to be our ornament for Morocco for Christmas tree I felt like it was just so fitting because we had such a wonderful time making our babushes yesterday and now I have a mini one for our tree so cute but with all of that I think we're actually going to end the video here and I know we didn't have much Moroccan food in this video and that's because I'm saving my stomach space for tomorrow when we do a huge Moroccan food tour I think we're trying at least 10 things so if you want recommendations of where to eat in Marrakech stay tuned for that if you'd like to follow along as we travel to 50 countries around the world hit subscribe we'll catch you all next time bye