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If you don't mind a bit of a non-sequitur, I've always had Morocco in my top 10 travel destinations for many reasons. What would you say are the best ways for a tourist there to grease the skids, avoid the annoyances, while also experiencing most of the interesting foreign-ness of the culture?
By way of example, I've been to Greece with my wife, and we know many native Greeks who return annually or nearly that often. They told us a bunch of important things such as: Athens is a shithole, stay there only a day or two, and book a hotel near the Parthenon. We thought we had done the 2nd, but it wasn't quite so "near" and had to traverse streets full of people doing drugs off of stair steps to get there. Also, we went to a west coast island instead of east coast, which are the more tourist-trap islands. West coast is where the rich American-immigrant Greeks vacation.
This is tough to answer because whenever I visit I get the inimitable privilege of having a bevy of family members eager to have me stay with them. That said, I don't think I've ever heard much complaints from Western tourists when they visit Morocco because the places everyone go to are generally completely authentic.
Maybe the most eye-wateringly touristy area is Marrakesh, but I found it really fun to visit as a native for the first time. The main market square is not some Potemkin village; it's a real bona fide market square that the locals go to, and despite the allure of appealing to Western wallets, you see plenty of street storytellers drawing huge crowds of bystanders by telling poems/jokes/stories in the local language.
I'd say almost all the main cities with medinas (Marrakesh, Fes, Rabat, etc.) are solid destinations because it's such a unique urban landscape. Sale is personally my favorite place, in part because it's not a tourist area, but because that also means it doesn't have a cadre of police officers around to chase off the riff-raff. Casablanca has some neat places but mostly it's just a big boring modern city with modern conveniences (my grandpa's house got demolished and is now a Starbucks).
Oh, and make sure you eat all the street food. Seriously, it's all amazing and safe. I asked my cousins for advice on which street vendors I should stay away from to avoid getting sick, and they completely did not understand the premise of my question. It might be a cultural thing; there's no shortage of scammers and pickpockets in Marrakesh, but apparently fucking with food is just unconscionable.
That is exactly the sort of thing that will give me a jumping off point!
Plus, I love street food.
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