Private Marrakech Day Trip from Casablanca with Menara Garden

Marrakech in a single unhurried day, three hours south of Casablanca, with none of the driving or parking. Your English speaking driver/guide collects you early, handles the motorway run both ways and waits at each stop, so the day is yours. You start at the Koutoubia Mosque, whose twelfth century minaret has set the skyline of the city for eight hundred years. Then the Bahia Palace, a nineteenth century residence of quiet courtyards, carved cedar, painted ceilings and zellij tilework. The medina follows: a dense maze of lanes and workshops where dyers, leather workers and metalsmiths still work in the open, opening out onto Jemaa el-Fna, the great square that shifts from juice stalls and storytellers by day to an open air kitchen after dark. The day closes at the Menara Gardens, an old olive grove around a large reflecting basin with the High Atlas behind it on a clear day. Entrance fees are paid on the day. Return to your Casablanca accommodation in the evening.