STAY

Amanjena

I’d spent the whole day before Amanjena in the medina — dust, noise, everyone trying to sell me something — and by the time I got through the gates, someone was already handing me mint tea before I’d gotten my bag out of the car. I ended up eating at Nama, the property’s Japanese restaurant, because two different people told me to book it before I’d even checked in, and it turns out Kamal Laftimi, the restaurateur half of Gueliz takes direction from, calls it the best Japanese food in the city, not just the best hotel version of it.

Jnane Rumi

which only opened last spring and is already the property everyone in the travel press can’t stop talking about. It’s out in the Palmeraie, filled with a mix of old Moroccan furniture and contemporary art, and it feels more like walking into a private oasis estate than a hotel.

El Fenn

And then there’s El Fenn, in the medina, which I was told to book by several industry friends. The sunset bar is the reservation nobody gets without planning ahead, and the small jewelry case downstairs, filled with pieces by Marisa Berenson, ended up being one of my favorite five minutes of the whole trip.

La Mamounia

it felt wrong to be in Marrakech and not stay here. The gardens alone were worth the trip, and I stayed on for dinner at the new Italian restaurant, which was excellent in an indoor/outdoor setting with ambient light to set the vibe. Their spa is also legendary. I enjoyed a hammam experience, and the nice touch is that you don’t need to book a spa appointment to enjoy their spa facilities.

eat

I started more mornings than I’d like to admit at Bacha Coffee, which sits inside a small museum in the medina and somehow makes ordering a cup of coffee feel like an event — there are teas and coffees from around the world, and I never had the same one twice.

For dinner one night, I ended up at Mö-Mö, right on the edge of Jemaa el Fna, which might be the best seat in the city for watching the square shift from afternoon into night. The food is good, but I mostly remember the two rooftop terraces and how alive the whole scene felt.

And Otto’s Rooftop, which a friend who’d been the month before told me not to skip — I’m still thinking about the octopus appetizer and pasta main course. Of course, the view as the sun went down was not a bad way to end an evening in Marrakech.

do

I made time for the YSL Museum and I’m glad I didn’t rush it the way I almost did. I stayed on for tea at the museum café afterward, which turned into one of the more unexpectedly relaxing hours of the whole week.

Right next door, inside the Majorelle Gardens, I also stopped into the Berber Museum, which holds Pierre Bergé’s own collection. The caftan on display had just been added to the UNESCO Intangible Heritage list while I was planning this trip, which made standing in front of it feel different than it would have a year earlier.

I almost walked straight past Musée Tiskiwin, which is easy to do since it’s really just one small room. It’s built entirely from a Dutch scholar named Bert Flint’s personal collection, and it ended up being better than some of the bigger, more famous museums I visited that week.