What a visitor's money does in Morocco: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Moroccan Dirham (MAD) · 1 EUR = 10.8 MAD · 1 USD = 9.5 MAD
The dirham cannot be bought abroad, so change on arrival at a bank or licensed bureau and keep the receipt to change back. The medina runs on cash — the tanneries, the food stalls, the man who guides you out when you are lost — and small notes matter more here than anywhere.
Avoid: machines inside the medina, of which there are essentially none anyway
Use: Attijariwafa Bank, Banque Populaire, BMCE — at the medina gates
Every Moroccan machine charges about 25 dirhams a withdrawal. Take out enough at Bab Boujloud before you walk in, because there are no cars and no banks inside.
A short ride in Fes: 20–50 dh across town — cheap
The petits taxis are metered by law and frequently are not in practice. Insist on the meter or agree the fare first.
Fes is where Moroccan cooking is taken most seriously: pastilla, harira, and a tagine cooked slowly rather than assembled for a tour group. Eat where there is no menu in English. The street food around Bab Boujloud is safe and good, and the mint tea is poured from a height for a reason.
The port grills are the point: pick your fish by weight at the stalls behind the marina and it is cooked in front of you for a fraction of restaurant prices. Otherwise tagine, harira and amlou — the argan and almond spread that is a local speciality, not a tourist invention.
Eat tagine and couscous at local restaurants in the side alleys, not on the main square. Try msemen (flatbread) for breakfast and fresh orange juice (MAD 5) on the square.
The harbour grills: pick your fish off the ice, watch it cooked, eat it at a trestle table. Argan oil and amlou are from here. The medina cafés are relaxed in a way Marrakech's are not.
Camp food is tagine, bread baked in sand, and mint tea in quantity. Madfouna — a stuffed flatbread called Berber pizza — is the local dish and is worth stopping for.
Goat cheese from the hills, which is unusual in Morocco, and tagines cooked slowly. The square is where everybody eats and the prices show it; a street back is half.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
FesMoroccoThe largest car-free urban area on earth, and it has been that way for 1,200 years
MarrakechMoroccoSpices, souks, and desert sunsets
ChefchaouenMoroccoA medina painted every shade of blue, on a mountainside in the Rif, three hours from anywhere
AgadirMoroccoTen kilometres of Atlantic beach, three hundred days of sun, and no medina
EssaouiraMoroccoA walled Atlantic port of white and blue, with trade winds that made it a kitesurfing town
Merzouga & the SaharaMoroccoThe dunes of Erg Chebbi, 150 metres high, at the end of the road from Marrakech