The Telegraph
Travel | Destinations
“The ultimate riad fantasy, hidden away in the heart of the Fez medina. A family home where children and dogs roam a courtyard filled with orange trees and days can be spent lolling by a turquoise pool, or on a roof terrace with views that make your heart skip a beat.”
Location
If you could say the Fez medina has a hot spot, this would be it, where the two main shopping streets – the Ta’laa Sgira and Ta’laa K’bira (small slope, big slope) – converge via the Zkak Rouah. It’s also minutes from some of the best restaurants in town (Nur for fine dining, Ruined Garden for Moroccan tapas, Moi Anan if you get bored of tagine and fancy some home-spun Thai).
Style & character
With soaring proportions and vast, zellige-tiled rooms owners Fred and Cathy have managed to carve out a space that feels warm and cosy despite its size with lots of places to chill out in. It’s muted rather than shouty, and has been cleverly bought to live with some quirky touches like distressed metal sofas and armchairs piled high with jewel-coloured cushions.
Service & facilities
Oozing generosity in everything it offers – and it offers a lot – you get a lot of bang for your buck here. There’s a small, but perfectly formed candle-lit hammam where you can get a scrub down and a top-flight massage, followed perhaps by their signature cinnamon and orange infused gin and tonic, or a fresh minted lemondade, in the courtyard. A good-sized pool was added on the first floor last summer along with a whitewashed bar and shady, fern-filled porticoes for poolside dining. Straw hats and hand-woven fouta (the Moroccan equivalent of a South East Asian sarong) provided, officially making it the most desirable place to stay in the medina once temperatures soar. When the temperatures drop – and they really do come the winter months – there’s a real wood fireplace in the salon where you can snuggle up with a book. But above all it’s the staff, many of whom have been here from the outset, who flit about making sure you want for nothing that really make it.
Rooms
Stately without being prim, and organised by the colour of the bathroom tadelakt and the textiles. The Grey Suite, for example, is soothing and spacious with a tub big enough for two in the bathroom, deep metal armchairs topped with vermillion velvet arranged around a red brick fireplace and a large writing desk overlooks the orange tree courtyard. Atmospheric extras like the incense and candles burning when you arrive, and velvet babouche (slippers) embroidered with the hotel’s insigna, which are yours to take home, do much to reinforce the fact you’ve arrived in North Africa. If you’re on a budget, the annex house offers smaller, but no less lovely rooms. All it really misses are some in-room tea and coffee making facilities, so you can hole up for an afternoon.
Food & Drinks
Breakfast is served daily on the roof terrace offering a choice of traditional Moroccan breads and pastries, fruit salads and yogurt, eggs to order. Through the day the restaurant serves excellent sandwiches and salads as well as a plat du jour – fried calamari with harissa-spiked mayo, lamb chops with Mediterranean barley salad, or big bowl of spaghetti Puttanesca anybody? – and traditional Moroccan home-cooking by night. They also have an alcohol license, which means you can work your way through some rather good Moroccan wines too.
Value for money
Double rooms from £95 in low season, plus local tourist taxes of £2.50. Breakfast included. Free Wi-Fi.
Access for guests with disabilities?
This part of the medina has reasonably good access from the Bab Boujloud (blue gate), which is not impossible for wheelchair users. The riad also has two ground-floor suites that are easily accessed. Be aware however, there’s no lift, so accessing the pool or the roof terrace would be difficult.
Family-friendly?
Arguably one of the most child-friendly hotels in town. Owners Fred and Cathy have a brood of four, who you’ll often see scampering around befriending newcomers of their own age.
Riad Laaroussa, 3 derb bechara, Fes, Morocco.
00212 6 74 18 76 39
riad-laaroussa.com
