Surviving the Marrakech Medina: A First-Timer's Field Notes

You will get lost. Accept this immediately and the medina becomes a playground rather than a labyrinth. Jemaa el-Fna — the main square — is your compass. Every winding souk alley eventually leads back to it, and the minarets of the Koutoubia mosque are visible from almost anywhere in the old city.

The best strategy: walk the main souk routes on your first morning without stopping. Just look. By afternoon you will have the spatial memory to negotiate with vendors from a position of genuine disinterest, which is the only way to buy a carpet at a fair price.

Eat at hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the residential quarters of the medina, not around the square. Lamb tangia, cooked underground in terracotta pots overnight, is the dish Marrakchis eat on Fridays. Find a place that serves it and ignore the menu entirely.