Marrakech with small children - first hand tips please!

[Sunway769]

Hello,

I’m hoping there are some people out there who might be able to help me in planning a family trip to Marrakech.

We’ve booked 5 days in the Feb half term in a self catered Airbnb in the medina. We’re not really hotel people and this felt the best option for us. We are two adults, a 5 year old and 3 year old. We live in central London and have done a lot of travelling as a family in Europe, but haven’t been further afield since having children. We are fairly independent and adventurous but do have some neurodiversity in our group so have to be strategic when it comes to managing some things.

We are thinking:

• some of the gardens
• a palace
• an explore of the souks - possibly walking tour
• an art gallery/ museum
• possibly a water park or day pass at a hotel pool (although some people have said Feb might be far too cold for this?)
• sonething camel related - Palmerie? Agafy? 5 year old will want to ride one, 3 year old will not!
• possibly an art class for me and the 5 year old

any tips or suggestions/ experiences?

I’m particularly interested in what others have done about the lack of car seats in taxis, particularly on day trips, any tour recommendations, especially for day trips, first hand experiences of children and camels - is it too risky? - buggies in the medina…our 3 year old hates the carrier. We have an old icandy with pram board that we rely on normally, but is this far too big? Would a yo-yo be better? Both children are also pretty good walkers.

Thanks in advance 😊

Oh and any experience with assisted boarding on the return flight? We usually book this through the airline and sunflower lanyard scheme. Has anyone done this in Marrakesh?

I have not been to Marrakech but have been to Fez with babies a few times and it was lovely , fine. We had a riad with a housekeeper a few times but I found it restrictive, and found some of the hygiene practices a bit dubious, only because I was slightly paranoid about food poisoning.(eg they would rinse vegetables in tap water as they were used to it and so on).
Self catering is a good shout, food is lovely and loads of breads , yoghurts , couscous etc that the kids love. I took a Maclaren stroller which was no problem, but obviously fez is car free and Marrakech has the scooters etc.
The first time I went we paid for a tour guide , a tailored one where we said the things we wanted to see. It was money well spent for the first day, just to find our bearings etc.
If we went on excursions we booked recommended drivers through hotels. Even if you’re not staying, many of the better hotels organise excursions with reputable drivers. These tend to be in newer, nice cars with air con , blacked out windows etc, which will definitely feel safer with small children.
you do have to just throw yourself into the experience a bit, and definitely don’t plan to do to much. There is an undeniable about of hassle in Morocco and it can get very overwhelming with small kids.
It’s also worth finding a nice hotel that will allow you to use their pool for a small fee.

We took our two at a similar age, a few years ago now. We took our Bee so I guess similar to the yoyo - it worked well as I recall, there were some places where we needed to navigate steps so being able to lift it easily was useful.

Our ability to do trips was a bit limited because I got a dodgy tummy (very unusual for me). Do be super careful with hygiene, take hand sanitiser for souk visits. However we did visit the souks, did a camel ride, visited the YSL gardens, went to the main square in the evenings, and I would recommend it all. I’d also consider a day trip to the Atlas or desert if your DC are ok with long car drives. Hopefully your Air BnB host can make recommendations for drivers and restaurants - if not then I agree it would be a good idea to organise it via a decent hotel. We didn’t get hassle as I recall, other than people offering to “show us the way” to where we were going, which we refused.

I don’t remember what we did about car seats… probably didn’t worry about it, although we did own an inflatable booster so maybe we took that.

Re car seats I used to have those back bags that changed into a booster seat. They were really good for this kind of thing. Not sure if suitable for the 3yr old but we used for my DD when she was 5 and 6, and for my son at 9-10 (as he was quite short). More like a booster so at least makes the seat belt the correct height.

Lack of car seats is something you may have to suck up. If it helps, the chances of the car seat making a difference multiplied by the chances of a serious accident are sufficiently small that you really don't need to worry about it — car seats are a great idea but the effect is only noticeable at the level of a large population.

One tip I would give is not to freak out too much if people do the equivalent of "awww look at their chubby little cheeks" to your kids in markets, etc. We lived in an Arab country for a year when DS was 6 months old and he sometimes got passed around several women in the souk who admired his then blond-ish hair and his (still fabulous today) eyelashes.

Buggies in the medina are fine although some of the paths can get busy (think crowded U.K. market) which makes getting through hard.

i’m disabled and used assistance both in and out of Marrakech airport I have now been twice. No problems either way. The people who pushed me (wheelchair) had limited but adequate English and great French.

We are currently in Marrakech. The medina is incredibly polluted because of the traffic, particularly the motorbikes that are absolutely everywhere. That would be my main worry with small children tbh

Thanks so much everyone. This is all really helpful.

Thank you for sharing this - it’s really useful to hear first hand. Usually when we fly we register for special assistance via the airline and are then supported through all stages of departure by a porter and wheelchair use, which is incredibly helpful. This usually means limited time waiting in queues. Is your experience with Marrakech similar to this? I think we’ll manage it if so - if not then going might prove more difficult.

We stayed in Palmeraie and Kasbah with young kids. I personally preferred Kasbah for food and the vibe but it was too noisy. Palmaraie felt a bit like any resort but there was probably more for the kids to do.