Marrakech by Mike Wood

My family and I live in the South East of England and the genesis of this tale lies in the fact that my best friend in England is Moroccan. For many years Mohammed and I talked about a trip to his home country which we finally got round to doing in 2003 visiting his birthplace of Casablanca, where I was lucky enough to experience the warm hospitality of his family, as well as touring a number of other towns including the charming port of Essaouira and, most significantly for me Marrakech. Walking inside the ancient City walls of the old town of Marrakech is like stepping inside the pages of the bible. For centuries the Red City has sat at an intersection between cultures, a trading post and meeting place for intrepid Europeans, ethnic arabs from the East and the Camel Caravans that crossed the desserts to the South from sub saharan Africa. Today its narrow streets, too tight to accommodate cars, are teeming with life from

street vendors, food stalls, donkeys and carts, locals of all ages and tourists from the corners of the globe. At the heart of Marrakech sits the incomparable Jema al Fnaa square filled with the sights sounds and smells of snake charmers, storytellers, acrobats, performing monkeys, henna artists, musicians, dancing boys, orange juice sellers, primitive dentists and all manner of other enterprises and entertainers. At dusk the north side of the square becomes the worlds largest and most welcoming open air barbecue. The best discovery of all from that first trip to Morocco was the hidden world of the Riad, the traditional form of courtyard home built inward facing around a central garden, in fact the literal meaning of riad in arabic is garden. Each Riad is a private space with no outward facing windows, its closed form providing shelter from the heat of the sun as well as privacy for traditional muslim families. It is difficult to believe the contrast between the calm of a Riad courtyard and the vibrant chaos of the streets outside.

My mind was made up, I had to have a Riad! My wife was willing to go along with the plan although at that stage she would really have preferred a Gite in France or a nice cottage in Derbyshire. There followed two years of frustration searching for the right Riad to renovate only to be thwarted by sellers who changed their minds, difficulties of understanding and translation, title deeds that could not be found, and a hundred and one other obstacles. Reassuringly the more we went back to Marrakech the more we became convinced that this was the one place in the world we had visited which we could see our family coming back to indefinitely. Marrakech is such a cosmopolitan City, it seems a new restaurant opens every week many to top international standard, the souks are endlessly fascinating, the seaside is a short day trip, and the Atlas mountains are your playground with walking trekking and even skiing in winter all around an hour away. Where else can you bathe in dependably warm sun on a private roof terrace within sight of snow topped mountains!

Early in 2006 the search finally bore fruit and we took possession of a beautiful tall, proud old Riad in Baroudiyine, one of the oldest districts of the old town Medina near to the Marrakech museum and the historic Ben Youssef Mosque with its fabulous Maddrassa. Then having waited patiently for so long for our Riad a second one fell into our laps! My wife Lucie, who by this stage was as passionate about the project as me was idly sitting at her keyboard one day and for reasons best known to herself tapped the search term 'riad for sale' into google. Up came a delightful courtyard garden house, perfectly proportioned, only five minutes from our new Marrakech home and annoyingly quite a bit cheaper! So we had no choice really, we had to buy that one as well, a feat which was accomplished less than a week from meeting the charming German owner. So there we were, proud owners of two Marrakech Riads each with their own charm and both in need a more than a little TLC. Their subsequent renovation and conversion into successful boutique hotels Riad Papillon and Riad Cinnamon involved five years of highs, lows, escalating budgets and constant learning about a very particular and fascinating culture......... but that is another story.

Mike and Lucy are running 2 Riad hotels in Marrakech. You can contact them on www.marrakech-riad.co.uk to discuss and book your accommodation.