Holiday houses in Marrakech

Why people go to hotels any more is beyond me. Stuart has a splendid Riad, centrally located with good staff and comfortable beds. He responds quickly and appropriately to queries and the Riad is as shown on the website. Atiqa is a good Moroccan cook and if you buy alcohol in the supermarket and eat in at night costs are very reasonable and the experience feels both bespoke and authentic. If you want a private experience in Marrakech, avoiding the global sanitisation of an up market hotel, I would thoroughly recommend Riad Ciel Blue (AKA Dar Soulahfa - see Trip Advisor).

we were met at airport by a man with a mercedes, took us to the apartement complex where addul took us to the apartement,neither knew much english ,a smattering of french is a definate asset. apatement was as described but looks a little tired , some of the tiled areas would look better regrouted. kitchen hada fridge freezer ,micro and a bottle gas cooker. yousef's cafe on site did omeletes , bread and coffee for four for less than a hundred dirams , about six quid . evening 4 mains and coffees was arround 200 dirams , so we did no cooking in the apartment at all. theres a choice of cafes and shops on site , with the private roof terrace to catch the sunshine you could stay all week on site. out the main gate and accross the road and youre at the city walls, venture far on foot and youll be acosted by helpful natives all after your money, dont look , non mercy and keep walking, theres a lot of focus sized petit taxis flying arround , but theyll only take 3 passengers, 60 d to the other side of the city, as a family of 4 we had to look for a merc, grand taxi, 100 d accross the city. not so pleantiful but still easy to find. maybe you could haggle but its worth the money to avoid the "touts" . probably the funniest sight youll see is the expression on the odd hire car driver's face when you meet one in the narrow streets with bikes , motorbikes , pedestrians . donkey carts and the odd bus smoothly flowing (mostly) with inches to spare , no pavements , no traffic lights and we didnt see a single accident. same guy with the merc turned up at the agreed time to whizz us back to the airport . the easyjet cabin crew said theyed never seen rain in marrakesh before. to sum up the appartment isnt 5 star european standard , could benefit from some basic maintenance, but perfectly adequate for a family for a week or two and the location is convienient. easy to walk into the city if youre thick skinned or a short taxi ride to avoid the hassle.

We enjoyed aur stay at the Riad Junaina and wished we were there for longer. We got slightly mixed up with the actual apartment when we arrived as we couldn't work out the letter system! But once the local agent Abdul Latif took us in hand we were fine. We enjoyed the pool and the apartment shaped like a mini riad and the air conditioning Abdul escorted our hire car to the airport and sorted us out with returning the hire car especially as we were as usual, short of time!

This appartment on the outskirts of Marrakech is set in a quiet complex away from the bustle of the city - but an easy and cheap taxi ride away. The decoration and architecture of the 4 storey building was breathtaking on arrival - and met all of our needs during the stay. Khalid ensured that we were met at the airport, had everything we needed and sorted out a brilliant trip for us to visit the mountains 1 hr away. The pools on the complex were perfect for much-needed cooling off - although there are no sunloungers available - just some patchy grass for laying out towels. Overall a great week in busy Marrakech, which was great value for money shared between 5 friends as we were, and i imagine great for a family too.