I'm a big proponent of breaking free from hotel travel and, where possible, renting a villa or an apartment when visiting foreign destinations. It worked out mostly well in Buenos Aires, fabulously well in Phuket, Bali, Rome, San Miguel de Allende...
There are several reasons I prefer to rent my own place rather than stay in a hotel. Three years ago I wrote about it (in the first link on this post).
Aside from getting a sense of belonging to a culture that most hotel guests can never experience, there are some tangible reasons I like to get my own place. I don't eat junk food and I take breakfast seriously. Even in NYC, where I do stay in a hotel, I always get one with a kitchenette. That way I can stock up on healthy goodies (fruits, nuts, etc) and on breakfast goods (blueberries, melons, papayas, lemons...) and have a place to store them and prepare them conveniently. It is virtually always much less expensive to rent your own place than to stay in a hotel. And it's far more personal.
Marrakesh is a perfect place for renting a house-- a riad-- and they have a whole tourism sector around the idea. Scores of beautiful old town houses have been renovated and updated either as beds-and-breakfasts or as houses rentable by a single party. I'm writing today, in fact, from the sitting room of the 4 bedroom riad I rented for most of December here in Marrakesh. I wrote a bit about the specific details of this place last week when I first got here.
But there's another side of the coin as well, which makes this style of travel not appropriate for everyone. I certainly love the feeling on being integrated, even if just a little, into the rhythm of life in a small neighborhood. After a week, everyone I pass in the alleyways says hello to me and I'm already friends with all the small children. That's the good part. But my Arabic is not great and my French isn't that much better so it isn't easy to communicate beyond the basics. And in an old place like this... well, things can go wrong.
Las night the electricity went down. It was an all night drama and it didn't get fixed 'til late this morning. If something like that happened in a hotel, the hotel management would take care of it. The housekeeper and her son were very helpful in this case, but I had to oversee the whole thing myself.
As I mentioned when I was in a villa on Bali, a friend felt our luxurious place was like "camping out" and she checked into a 5-star hotel after a few days. She almost came along on this trip. I think she'd be around the corner at the Mamounia by now-- even if it does cost around $700/day for the most modest accommodation they have. There's nothing of the real world they have to worry about in a place like that; everything gets taken care of and you're just there to have a vacation. I like to travel to live my life in different environments. It's somewhat different from a vacation. But not for everybody.
Today's Tip:
The best place I've found to change cash is the money-changer booth at the front of the Hotel Ali. It's right off the Jemaa el Fna. He consistently has a slightly better rate than anyone else in town and charges no commission. It's a much better deal than you'll get at any banks, although perhaps an ATM is better yet. (I don't know.) My friend Melody arrived with travelers checks and the rate for them isn't great and most places don't want them. Hotel Ali will take 'em but only if you have a receipt. The bank next door wouldn't take them at all but they recommended another hotel money changer- Taza-- and they gave her a so-so rate and charged a 15 dirham commission per check. Better to bring cash.It wasn't a great difference. $500 in cash dollars at the Hotel Ali brought just over 4,150 dirhams. The same amount in 5 travelers checks at Taza brought 4,025 dirhams-- a difference of 125 dirhams ($15.60).
I suppose this post should really be something like "Where I Stayed In Rome (And Albania)" but I'm hoping that some of the ideas-- even if not the specific locales-- will be helpful to travelers even beyond people looking to experience a vacation vicariously. But let me start at the very end of my trip, one night in Rome before catching a flight to London and then on to home in L.A. You see, the trip this time involved an extended stay in Rome in the beginning-- and I'll get to that in a moment-- followed by a week or so of busing around Albania. But it was that one night in Rome at the end, basically insurance against unreliable airplane travel, that had me worried.
I've been to Italy many times in the past, first when I lived in Innsbruck, Austria and could easily drive down to Verona or Venice for a weekend and later when I was running Reprise Records and could never find enough excuses to visit our wonderful affiliates in Milan, where I became so well known at the hotel, the Principi di Savoia that my suite was always my suite. (The Four Seasons Milano is also spectacular, arguably the best Four Seasons in Europe, and many of our bands preferred to stay there which is why I did sometimes as well. But in the end, it was the classic Principi I always preferred.) The Principi was a relative bargain too. They always gave me a room for around $600/night while the Four Seasons charged around $850. I felt I was doing the TimeWarner shareholders a solid by staying at the bargain hotel.
But Milano isn't Rome. And I'm no longer an employee of TimeWarner and now pay for my own hotels. In the past when I've gone to Rome on TimeWarner's dime I stayed at the Russie, conveniently located between the Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps. I would have been happy to stay there again on our one night in Rome at the end of the trip. The cheapest double in the joint was almost $1,000/night (breakfast not included). And it wasn't that fabulous, not when I'm putting up my credit card. Andre, the wonderful travel agent who first found me the Russie when we were both at TimeWarner, suggested a hotel nearby that he says is the only 5--star bargain in the whole city, the Parco dei Principi right on the Borghese Gardens surrounded by mansions, many of which are now embassies. It's just outside the Aurelian Walls-- so the $40 set fee taxi ride doesn't apply and the minute and a half it takes from the gate costs you about $25 in the cab-- but the hotel is just as nice as the Russie and much quieter. It cost us around $350 for a double which they upgraded (a courtesy to Andre) to a deluxe room. Roland wasn't a huge fan of the decor, which he termed "Louis XIV meets Liberace," and the antiquated awkwardness of not having a viable, usable Wifi system makes it a no-go for business travelers. But they did have the absolute most wonderful bath towels I've ever used and everything about the hotel is absolutely elegant.
One of the things about Rome that few tourists realize-- and the Romans never talk about (if they even realize it themselves)-- is that the city is tiny and as complicated as they try to make it, once you get the hang of it, you really can walk anywhere. Someone might tell you that the Borghese Gardens are a million miles from the center; it's a 10 minute walk to the Spanish Steps. We decided to say arrivederci to 2009 at an intense Michelin-star restaurant, il Convivio Troiani on a tiny pedestrian street near the Tiber just north of Piazza Navona. The concierge at the hotel was delighted we were eating at such a wonderful restaurant-- and was it ever!-- but he was horrified when I asked him if we could walk there. In his mind it would be like walking from the Four Seasons in Manhattan to Chinatown or from the Four Seasons in West Hollywood to the Water Grill downtown: undoable. It turned out to be a super-direct 20-30 minutes gorgeous stroll that added to the glamor of the evening.
I know this post is supposed to be about where to stay, not where to eat, but I can't not mention how over the top we both are about il Convivio. They describe the cuisine as a "modern, revisited version of traditional Italian fare. Don't expect pizza or meatballs and spaghetti. The chef kept sending out goodies all night and every single detail was explained to us by a superb waiter in the tradition of professionals whose job wasn't so much to write down an order and schlep out some dishes, but to make you feel you were having the best meal of your life. I started with orange scented organic barley with porcini mushrooms and black truffle uncinatum (hold the duck tartare) and Roland got going with fried zucchini flowers with buffalo's mozzarella, anchovies creamed, sweet and sour red pepper spicy sorbet. Between the incredibly rich starters and the stuff the chef had sent out, we were already full. My main course was salt cod cooked with artichokes, potatoes, truffle and sweet garlic sauce and Roland had organic oxtail "vaccinara style" with mashed spicy potatoes and mushrooms. He also ate 2 pieces of 6 varieties of homemade bread that he said was mind-blowing. Neither of us was interested in dessert but he wound up eating 12 of them that the chef sent us.
And, yes, Rome is a city you will have to work hard at finding a bad place to eat. Every meal we had there was fantastic, even in the restaurants with no Michelin stars. OK, back to the where to stay thing. If you follow this blog, you already know that my travel preference is to stay in places for weeks at a time and rent houses or-- in cities-- apartments. That's how we started the trip in Rome, a few weeks before our one last night at the Parco dei Principi.
I started my search online months ago, looking at the listings for apartments in Rome. There are tons of them. I found what I was looking for at HomeAway.com, a spacious two bedrooms/two bathrooms flat in an old 17th Century palace in the quiet, funky Monti neighborhood behind the Forum, a hop, skip and a jump from the Coliseum Metro station. There's a highly functional, well-equipped kitchen, a large dining room and large living room... and excellent Wifi (and free local phone calls). Here's the online description:
The aristocratic PALAZZO DEL GRILLO, 17th century, in the very heart of Old Rome OVERLOOKING the archaeological area called the IMPERIAL FORUMS between the Colosseum and Piazza Venezia, is the perfect location for all who want to have one of the great sites of antiquity right outside their windows. The Palazzo del Grillo, decorated by artists of the Bernini School, is a famous example of Roman Rococo architecture. COLISEUM is less than 5 MINUTE WALK from the apartment. Also EASY WALK DISTANCE TO ALL THE MOST IMPORTANT TOURIST SITES. THE APARTMENT: deluxe accommodation for 1-6 persons: 105sq m / 1135sq ft apartment (all modern comforts: dishwasher, washing machine, AIR CON, INTERNET) on second floor with ELEVATOR/LIFT, consists of: the large double LIVING ROOM with dinner area and relax area, 2 BEDROOMS (second bedroom usable as study too), 2 BATHROOMS, KITCHEN. Safe, quiet, easy walk distance public transportations and public garage.
It was a fraction of what two rooms in an equivalent hotel would cost-- or even one room! No, we didn't have the Frette sheets or the fancy towels but with what you save, you can afford to buy them and take them home! And after a few days you start to feel like you're part of the neighborhood and that you're living a normal life, not just a time and space cut-out from reality (which, no doubt, many people prefer).
OK, I know I'm going to give short shrift to Albania now. But let's be real; more people visit Rome in a day or two than Albania in a full year. Most people who do visit go in the summer and hang at the Adriatic beaches. We went in the winter and the beaches we passed, around Durrës on the way inland to Berat (AKA, Berati), looked overdeveloped, commercialized and distinctly unappetizing.
The best hotel in Tirana is the Sheraton. It's a kind of western oasis and makes the inevitable immersion into Albania-- if you plan to leave the capital, which is a MUST-- a little easier. The Sheraton has worldwide centralized booking and they charge too much. But if you book a night through them, you can make a deal with the hotel for further nights based on local rates, which are about half. The hotel is a typical modern business hotel with a great gym and indoor pool, decent rooms, wonderful bathrooms compared to anything else you're going to find in the country, Wifi, etc.
We booked the rest of our trip through Albania Holidays, paying in advance and leaving everything up to them. It couldn't have gone more smoothly. And the hotel rooms out in the country cost around $25-30/night-- so there's plenty of room for errors. We picked what looked like the best and most interesting hotel (mostly bed and breakfasts really) in each town. The one exception was in Fier, an unexpected find that is basically not even mentioned in the tour books but is a prosperous town in the middle of Albania's oil and petrochemical industry. It's kind of the Houston of the country. The Hotel Fier is smack dab in the middle of town and was a real hotel with all the amenities. In Berat and Gjirokaster we stayed, respectively, at the Mangalemi and the Kalemi, each very heavy on the charm, the cultural authenticity and a little light on the amenities. It was well worth the trade-off.
I guess I should mention that the weather is way nicer in Albania than an hour away in Italy, where it was really cold and rained almost every day. Albania is noticeably warmer and less rainy. We liked Gjirokaster best:
The Mexican state of Guanajuato isn't a string of neon-lit party towns on the beach, the kind of place that attracts most tourists. In fact, if slathering on the tanning oil all day and getting drunk, smoking pot and partying all night is your idea of a vacation, there are definitely better places than San Miguel de Allende and the towns in this part of Mexico tailor-made for you. This probably isn't the right blog to look for them though. In San Miguel there is no beach. And no neon. It's the living, beating heart of old colonial Mexico. It's landlocked, high in the mountains and smack in the center of the country.
San Miguel de Allende is one of several small cities that were once fabulously wealthy silver-mining towns-- thus the rich infrastructure, elaborate grand cathedrals, stately homes, etc-- and eventually fell on hard times as the silver was depleted. Now Guanajuato is one of Mexico's poorest states but these towns have bounced back to some extent because of their natural beauty and their appeal to tourists and retirees. Most of the retirees are Americans and most of the tourists are Mexicans. San Miguel is right out of the 17th Century-- cobblestone streets and buildings that look like a colonial Mexican film set. In fact, we've seen two films being shot since we got here.
April, May and June are the only months where the weather is hot, although it never really gets unbearable. It rains in the late afternoons in the summers. Otherwise the weather is perfect all the time-- no A/C or heat required. The town is 6,400 feet above sea level so it does take a little time to get used to.
We rented a gorgeous townhouse with 4 bedrooms, a huge, well-equipped kitchen/dining room, a living room, three and a half bathrooms, a rooftop patio with a breathtaking view of the whole city, and a lush, peaceful garden. The house comes with a housekeeper. I always prefer renting a home to staying in a hotel and it's something I've done in Goa, Bali, Buenos Aires, Phuket, and wherever I can when I go someplace for more than a week. The biggest attraction for me is that it helps me feel like I'm not just a here-today-gone-tomorrow tourist but actually living in the place. That's especially easy in San Miguel, which is completely set up for that kind of tourism. Another advantage is that it generally costs as much for a whole week in this kind of situation as it does for a night in the same calibre hotel. Some people prefer hotels for other reasons; I'm not one of them.
Another advantage is eating, and not just how much more economical it is. My concern with food is usually related to health concerns. Preparing food at home is almost always far more healthy than eating in restaurants-- especially in Mexico-- where eating out means deadly lard-based cooking or, in the high-end restaurants, overly rich meals that are just as deadly. After trying a couple of top-end restaurants-- La Capilla (the "best" restaurant in town, up on a rooftop attached to the main cathedral) and Casa de Sierra Nevada en el Parque-- I decided to eat at home as much as possible to avoid the overly rich and unhealthy food. Grocery shopping in the central market is convenient, easy as pie, pleasant and cheap. Most of the vegetables we eat in California come from Mexico anyway.
I did discover a wonderful vegetarian restaurant, El Tomato, on Mesones (between Relox and Hidalgo) run by Mariano Alvarez, a young expat chef from Buenos Aires. The food is organic, delicious and completely healthful. It's been open for 3 months and it's my idea of the best restaurant in town. It costs about a third of what the high end places that make you sick cost. There's an awesome juice bar around the corner on Relox that also sells some basic healthy eatin' supplies. Eventually I discovered an actual health food store-- organic fruits and vegetables and all-- Natura on Calle Nueva over near el Instituto Allende. And around the corner from that, on Zacateros, is another, even newer vegetarian restaurant but I've gone by 3 times and never found it open yet.
Almost 10% of the residents of San Miguel Allende are expats-- many of them retirees from the U.S. and Canada. Somehow it's still managed to keep its authenticity and charm-- probably because the type of Americans who are attracted to live in a place like this aren't looking for the kind of glitzy plastic glamour that enchant uptight Republicans. Its very artsy, with galleries everywhere in town-- as well as an internationally renowned art school (the aforementioned Instituto).
We lucked out because right after we decided to come here, the exchange rate changed in our favor-- gigantically. Last month a dollar bought you 10 pesos. Now it's 14 pesos. That makes everything incredibly inexpensive for us. The place is very relaxed, easygoing and friendly. Yesterday two of the friends I'm sharing the house with, Helen and Justin, spent the day horseback riding in the countryside. I spent the day wandering around town, reading and getting a great massage at the Laja Spa (about $45/hour). The central square in front of the cathedral is a beautiful tree-lined park with free wifi.
UPDATE: More Good Vegetarian Eats In San Miguel
Above I was complaining how the restaurant on Zacateros was closed all 3 times I tried to visit. Make that 4. But, there's good news too: just a couple blocks up Zacateros, behind an antique store called Casa Grau, is a gorgeous space with a vegetarian/health food type restaurant operated by another Argentine expat, El Bajofondo. I had lunch there and the food was as delicious as the patio garden dining was relaxing and beautiful; very inexpensive too! And speaking of vegetarians, my friend Pach just informed me that there's a wonderful new vegetarian blog that just started, Just Vegging Out by David, a Washington, DC labor lawyer with two chihuahuas.
I think the first time I figured out that, generally speaking, renting a place was better than staying in a hotel was 1970. I rented a house for a couple of months on the beach in Goa. Once I figured out the function of the herd of pigs on the property, everything was smooth as silk and I settled in for a nice leisurely stay in my very first post-college home-of-my-own. It took me about 3 days to convince myself that I was actually a Goan and start, relatively speaking, integrating myself into the pulse of the community. I don't recall ever seeing a hotel in Goa although I'd hear from the hippies and other travelers who came to our beach-- the one that was 30 steps from my front door-- that there were hotels.
When you're staying in a place for less than a month, renting a place is tough. After my 10th trip to Thailand I finally figured out that a secluded villa on Phuket was way more what I was looking for than a berth at even the nicest of hotels. I don't think I ever put on any clothes for weeks at a time. And then a couple years ago I rented a villa overlooking the Ayung River in central Bali. Except to go pick up a friend who was staying at the Ritz, I never even visited the tourist ghetto on the island and, as far as I could tell from my vantage over the Ayung, I was indeed the only non-Balinese on the entire island.
These days, whenever I can, I always rent an apartment or a house rather than stay in a hotel. So, when planning my trip to Argentina a few months ago I was delighted when Lieber, an Argentine waiter at my favorite raw foods restaurant, told me that renting apartments was a very normal thing to do in Buenos Aires for anyone staying at least a week. Perfect! I found what looked like a reputable rental agency that specializes in dealing with foreigners and quickly found an apartment in the part of town (Recoleta) everybody was telling me was the safest and best located.
The apartment was perfect, right on Posadas, across the street from the Four Seasons Hotel-- a light, airy, well-kept one bedroom, with a living room, dining area and kitchenette, fully supplied with everything from sheets and silverware to a free phone for local calls, Wi-FI, a doorman and daily maid service. And the price? Prices vary based on location, size, all that stuff, but generally it costs for a week what you would pay for a night in a comparable hotel.
The agency I used was BytArgentina and I couldn't find anything online about them being unscrupulous or anything like that. My experience with the agents I used on Bali, BaliVillas, was superb and I just assumed-- uh oh-- that BytArgentina would be as good. They weren't-- and I mentioned what went wrong in a story I did a couple weeks ago about safety and scams in Buenos Aires.
In this case, the company (or perhaps the owner of the apartment, more likely), shrewdly not accepting credit cards, only cash, managed to separate me from $500. I had no recourse other than to suck it up. Something similar had happened to me in Tangier decades ago at the El Minzah Hotel (best in town), a $100 travelers check having been removed from the safe behind the reception desk! Left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but, after trying a couple of less grand hotels, I wound up back at the El Minzah a few times since. I know for sure I'd never rent an apartment through BytArgentina again (nor from Graciela Ujaque, the owner of the apartment). Would I rent an apartment in Buenos AIres again? 100% yes. Let me tell you why.
Aside from getting a sense of belonging to a culture that most hotel guests can never experience, there are some tangible reasons I like to get my own place. I don't eat junk food and I take breakfast seriously. Even in NYC, where I do stay in a hotel, I always get one with a kitchenette. That way I can stock up on healthy goodies (fruits, nuts, etc) and on breakfast goods (blueberries, melons, papayas, lemons...) and have a place to store them and prepare them conveniently. It is virtually always much less expensive to rent your own place than to stay in a hotel. And it's far more personal.
Not everyone agrees, of course. One of my friends found my luxurious villa (with 4 servants-- including the best cook on the island of Bali-- and a swimming pool) akin to camping out. She was eager to move to the more... sterile environment of the Ritz. (I talked about that syndrome a little when I discussed the Park Hyatt in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago.) Some people, maybe most, would prefer to be pampered and to have everything done for them, something more likely in a hotel. Me, I like going to the local markets and shopping for day to day stuff. You start to feel the rhythm of the town's life. Last time I stayed in Marrakesh, I gave up on the Mamounia and stayed in a riad instead, sort of halfway between a hotel and an apartment; well, not halfway, but we definitely had the feeling of being part of the neighborhood.
Because I've traveled so much and to so many places people are always asking me which was my favorite. For many years I would always say that it was a three-way tie between Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. These were all places I went between 1969 and 1971, places that blew my young mind. I went back to Sri Lanka in 1996-97 and I've been back to Nepal twice as well. Nepal holds up pretty well-- and I'll be writing about my trips there-- but Sri Lanka... well, long civil wars usually screw places up pretty badly. Afghanistan is still exquisite and pristine in my mind. But since those days I've been to many places and eventually Thailand supplanted my Big 3.
Last year, however, I discovered a place I had never been to but instantly fell in love with: Bali. I'm not a beach kind of guy; I always prefer a shark-free/non-sewage dumping swimming pool to the ocean-- and Bali is a small island famous for beach life. And drunken Australians, another thing of no interest to me. I'm more interested in native culture than sunburn and tourists; always have been. In researching Bali, I soon figured out that as long as you stay away from one little tiny area on the Southeast coast, specifically developed as a tourist ghetto so as not to pollute the island's incredible indigenous culture, you can still be in paradise. (Al Qaeda apparently figured this out too and the bombs you've heard about were all in the tourist ghetto area.)
So I decided to rent a villa in the interior, away from the crowded beach area-- but where? And how? Short answer: a Google search of "Bali + villa" soon brought me to Bali Villas, a great local company that rents out villas to visitors, most of which are owned by wealthy foreigners who only use them a month or two per year. (About 20% of tourists who came to Bali in the last couple of years rented a villa!) The one I rented has 4 bedrooms, lots of common space, a really beautiful swimming pool, 4 incredible people who live in an attached house and do all the work around the place-- including a mind-blowing chef. (She was able to adapt all the traditional Balinese and Indonesian recipes to my dietary restrictions of no sugar and no flour-- and, aside from fish, I'm a vegan; every single meal was MAGNIFICENT.) Also included was a van with a driver, Anwar, who was always there for whatever crazy requests the 4 of us made. I mean, some people love the beach and some love Hindu temples in remote mountains (me) and Anwar worked it all out, always.
Most of the great villas are on or near the beach. Most tourists go to Bali for the beaches. But there are places in the mountains and up near Ubud, the kind of cultural center of the island. Ours overlooked the mighty Ayung River (the photo above was taken from my bedroom terrace) and we never saw another foreigner anywhere nearby for the 3 weeks we were there. We never did find the "village" on a map and it had an impossible, unpronounceable name. It's between Denpasar and Ubud. That link gives all the details, amenities, prices, etc. I'll get into the reasons why I think Bali is the best overall place I ever visited in the next couple of blogs.
A riad is an urban house situated in the medina or kasbah. It isn't a random loosely defined lodging but one whose plans and arrangements are rigorously codified. Since Moroccan architecture is more inward looking and given to isolation and intimacy rather than showing off, a riad is a private, cloistered place of escape from the busy swirl outside its thick walls. A riad is organized around a central square courtyard, often decorated with zelige (traditional mosaic patterns) centering on a fountain and orange or lemon trees. 4 paths intersect in the middle. The central courtyard is usually surrounded by an arched colonnade giving access to the living rooms and kitchen. More sleeping areas are constructed on the upper floors, creating a covered arcade around the patio with balustrades running around each story. Traditionally roof top terraces use awnings to protect against the sun; great place for a meal.
Marrakesh is the riad capital of Morocco-- and they are more than giving the hotels a run for their money. A concierge in Tangier told me he was trying to book a room for a client who was going to Marrakesh the following week and there was not one room available anywhere in town! Europeans and forward-looking Moroccans have been buying up stately old homes, restoring them to their original splendor and turning them into riads. Their thick walls protect the inhabitants from the heat or the cold and most of the outside noise and hustle and bustle. More often than not, you find them along a derb (narrow alleyway) with no access by car.
This was my 10th visit to Marrakesh but the first in a riad. It so beats hotels I don't know where to begin. I guess the 2 things that impressed me most of all were how personal the service was and how integrated you feel in the rhythm of the media which you feel like a resident of. In the past I've stayed at the the Mamounia Hotel, easily the best hotel in the country, and always a contender for best hotel in the world. It was famous for being a home-away-from-home for European aristocrats and for Winston Churchill. The chilly, aloof, snooty service still seems to be expecting Churchill-- and we did see Mick Jagger's ex, Jerry Hall there on New Years Eve when we went over to see if the gardens were still as gorgeous and lush as we remembered them (they were)-- but... well, you're more likely to be hanging around a busload of Belgian housewives on holiday than anyone with a von or van in front on their name. The last time we stayed there Roland left some considerable amount of cash in the inside pocket of a suit jacket inside the wardrobe (never a good idea but I guess he felt safe in "the best hotel in the world"). We were at dinner for 90 minutes and when we got back, the cash was gone. It isn't like he left it on a bench at the bus station. I mean how many people had access? But the hotel management was aggressively unhelpful and when we called the police, the hotel became downright nasty. Beautiful rooms, beautiful gardens, rapidly accelerating rates and not a place I'd ever stay again. So... weren't we happy to find that riads had sprung up all over the medina and were reputed to be offering as wonderful an experience as the Mamounia!
There seem to be riads at many price ranges. I read about them online and found one that looked like it would be good for me, the Riyad el Cadi-- and did I ever come up with a TOTAL WINNER! Maybe there are better riads in Marrakech but I will probably never find out because I loved the el Cadi so much I'll always go back. Their website and this general riad site have good descriptions and details. But after the utterly impersonal service at the gorgeous (and formerly very personal) Palais Jamai in Fes, the wonderful total service/family atmosphere of the el Cadi was perfect. Anyone looking to get away from impersonal hotel service and arm's length relation to the life of the country should try a riad. In a way it's total immersion as well as a somewhat authentic Moroccan style of accommodation, offering a haven of tranquillity in the midst of the medina. They are pretty much all architectural treasures, that will give you an insight into tradition, culture and craftsmanship. The el Cadi's art collection is really beautiful and displayed everywhere.
The riad concept is taking off in Tangier and starting in Fes. Essaouira has 'em-- although I didn't pick as well there. If you're planning a trip to Morocco, I urge you to do a little research and think about riads instead of hotels.
The best place I've found to change cash is the money-changer booth at the front of the Hotel Ali. It's right off the Jemaa el Fna. He consistently has a slightly better rate than anyone else in town and charges no commission. It's a much better deal than you'll get at any banks, although perhaps an ATM is better yet. (I don't know.) My friend Melody arrived with travelers checks and the rate for them isn't great and most places don't want them. Hotel Ali will take 'em but only if you have a receipt. The bank next door wouldn't take them at all but they recommended another hotel money changer- Taza-- and they gave her a so-so rate and charged a 15 dirham commission per check. Better to bring cash.It wasn't a great difference. $500 in cash dollars at the Hotel Ali brought just over 4,150 dirhams. The same amount in 5 travelers checks at Taza brought 4,025 dirhams-- a difference of 125 dirhams ($15.60).
