In late October, I received an opaque message from a friend: “I have an idea! A proposal! A grand one!!”
The idea, she later detailed on the phone, was a trip to Morocco. Grace was restless and in need of adventure and, in retrospect, probably knew that it would take little effort to convince me that daydreams of meandering around souks and traipsing along dunes would stave off the March New England winter doldrums.
I said yes immediately.
So, too, are millions of others. Morocco is in the midst of a tourism boom: A record 19.8 million people visited in 2025, a 14 percent increase over the year prior and a record for the nation.
Situated on Africa’s northwestern corner, an hour-long ferry ride from Spain, Morocco is a melting pot of Europe, African, and Islamic culture. The cities peek into a way of life most Americans have never known, when dynasties ruled and most people’s lives were truly limited to the clay-colored walls of the medina.
Most of the travelers we bumped into were Europeans taking advantage of the proximity to their homelands and retirees with a zeal for traveling. But there are Americans about. During a stop on our long drive to Merzouga, a village at the edge of the Sahara desert, I met Maria, an 81-year-old woman who had left her husband at home in Plymouth — with his express encouragement, I should note — and joined a group flitting around Morocco.
“Every Tom, Dick, and Harry goes to Europe. I want to see life, want to see something unusual,” she said.
Two other women we shared a taxi with on our last day — inexplicably, from Shrewsbury and Warwick, R.I. — said much the same. Grace, for what it’s worth, had promised herself years ago during a trip to Spain, during which she stared at Morocco’s mountains across the Strait of Gibraltar, that she would visit one day.
The country has something for everyone: coastal beach towns out west where tourists can surf, and bustling cities are scattered throughout, with winding avenues at their core called medinas. There are even ski resorts, I was told as we drove through mountain passes so high that the clouds appeared to be almost in reach, leaving shadows on the ground below.
Start your trip in Marrakesh, a city on the western slope of Morocco. Marrakesh is a vibrant city, with a central square that awakens each night with snake charmers — I looked from a distance — and food vendors hawking skewered meats, savory pastries, and tangines, stews made in earthenware pots with a conical lid.
Tourists can visit Madrass Ben Youssef, one of the early schools in the region, laboriously adorned with tile mosaics and carved stone. Small rooms big enough for a cot and little else are crammed into every inch of the building, which made me appreciate the comparatively luxurious dormitories I had at Boston University.
Marrakesh will prepare you well for other parts of Morocco. The medina in Marrakesh is a maze, and we did get lost once or twice. But I was overwhelmed by what we were met with in Fes. The medina in the centrally situated city is denser and seemingly laid out with less logic. Grace and I got lost at least three times on our first night there, to the delight of a few men and schoolboys who tried to direct us. (A nice man came to our aid when we got lost in Marrakesh and wouldn’t accept a tip. Elsewhere, they demand money after giving people directions).
Whether it’s Marrakesh, Fes, or elsewhere — tourists and locals alike advise skipping Casablanca — the chances are that shopping is on the menu. The region is known for its souks, or marketplaces, where jewelry, shoe, pottery, and leather goods purveyors set up shop shoulder-to-shoulder with one another. (Somehow, the occasional motorcyclist insists on driving through the borderline-claustrophobic setup. It’s chaotic, but it works).
These antique malls are clearly drawing in the younger crowd. Look on Instagram or TikTok for Moroccan travel content, and you’ll be met with videos of young women showing off the deals they haggled in the souks. On our trip, it was easy to spot the clusters of 20- and 30-something women like ourselves around the souks, on their own shopping missions.
Take the social media advice on Morocco with a grain of salt. Influencers and influencer-wannabes forewarned of combative shopkeepers and street hustlers, and advised young women to dress modestly in the Islamic nation — no exposed shoulders or knees. I was mildly braced for this, but the reality surprised me. Yes, vendors were ready to pounce if our gaze slowed over their store shelves. But generally, the people we encountered were generous and nonplussed by our appearance. The scarf that I brought in case I needed to cover my head really only ended up being used as a cover during a brief rain shower or from the sun beating down.
“People see things on social media and come in with certain ideas,” our guide out into the Sahara, Othmane, told me when I asked about the Morocco travel advice that floats around social media. “Just come and be who you are.”
Othmane drove us to the other big draw of Morocco: the camel rides on the Sahara Desert.
After hours and hours of driving east, civilization fell away. Grace and I were met with a vast expanse of dunes, and a group of camels tethered to one another, waiting to trek us out to camp.
An entire industry has been built around taking Western tourists out into the sandy landscape. Grace and I stayed at a camp with dozens of tents, each flanked by patio furniture and containing a private bathroom with a shower and hot water. The guides tied scarves around women’s heads “like a Berber woman.” They stopped dutifully along our camel rides and held out their hands for people’s iPhones, taking videos and pictures.
There was still something pure about wandering into a largely untamed wilderness. The only creatures aside from us humans and the camels were the occasional beetle. Watching the sun set over the dunes, I knew I’d never experience anything like this again.