Morocco (Country Guide) (Paperback)

by Anthony Ham (Author)
Key Phrases: grands taxis, many riads, grand taxi lot, Ave Mohammed, High Atlas, Blvd Mohammed (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
…Lonely Planet, the intrepid traveler's bible...' --Los Angeles Times, April 2005


Product Description
Visit the Djemaa el-Fna late at night when most of the crowd is local p297. Join the locals in a public hammam and try not to flinch as layers of skin are sloughed off p443. Learn to cook from women who prepare wedding feasts in the city of romance, Marrakesh p306. Find a cure for baldness, impotence or camel sickness in markets all over the country. Five authors, two rented mules, 210 days of in-country research. Expanded Trekking chapter ­- each trek completed by footsore authors. All-new Culture chapter - meet Fatima, Driss and Amina and understand Moroccan culture through their eyes. You asked for it, we researched it - more language courses, cooking courses and sustain­able travel experiences.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet; 8 edition (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1740599748
• ISBN-13: 978-1740599740
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #64,021 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #5 in	Books > Travel > Africa > Morocco
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Barely updated, limited coverage, and assumes the reader is wealthy, December 27, 2007

By	Christopher Culver - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

For a recent trip to Morocco, I bought the 2007 edition of Lonely Planet's MOROCCO guide alongside its major competitor, The Rough Guide to Morocco. While Lonely Planet's guide covers the major sights and will be just the thing for casual holiday makers, it unfortunately continues the publisher's trend of abandoning "travel as lifestyle" readers, once Lonely Planet's target demographic.

If you intend on slowly working your way through the whole of Morocco, seeking contact with the locals at all cost, and traveling cheaply, then Lonely Planet guide is not really worth it. LP seems to assume that the reader is rich: it recommends expensive hotels and suggests that one hire guides. It also doesn't push people to meet ordinary Moroccans. Hammams (Turkish-style baths) are a great way to enter into local custom, but instead of listing ones patronized by the locals, LP often lists expensive spa-type locations. Morocco is also a paradise for hitchhiking, where again one is brought directly into contact with people not in the tourist trade, but LP doesn't pitch it.

Comparing the LP to the Rough Guide to Morocco, the Rough Guide comes out on top. Sure, the presence of a few ads in the text, and the fact that the Rough Guide line is published by the faceless corporation Penguin, are annoying. Nonetheless, the Rough Guide caters to all audiences, both the wealthy and shoestring travelers. The Rough Guide also describes Morocco in considerably more detail than the Lonely Planet guide, gives substantial recommendations on music, books, and film from or about Morocco, and even includes a few tales by Moroccan traditional storytellers.

Ahough both publishers have put out 2007 editions, the Rough Guide is more up to date than the Lonely Planet. An increasing number of travelers are heading down through Western Sahara to Mauritania and beyond. This route has gotten easier, with transportation now easy available from Dakhla. But Lonely Planet's coverage of this entire area seems to have changed little since the 2005 guide, and the authors still claim you have to provide your own transportation.

I found really only two points in favour of purchasing the Lonely Planet guide. One is a large section dedicated to trekking, which the Rough Guide lacks (though here it again assumes that the readers are wealthy). The other is that LP's maps are slightly more detailed for some cities than those in the Rough Guide. All in all, if you are a wealthy traveler looking for a relaxing but exotic vacation, you can ignore all that I've written and buy LP's guide with confidence. If you are an independent traveler planning on trekking, get both the LP and the Rough Guide. But the backpacking and hitchhiking crowd can just get the Rough Guide and pass the LP by.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just a little bit outdated, January 28, 2005

By	deipnosophist (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonely Planet Morocco (Paperback)

Despite all the bad things that people say about LP, they're still one of the best books out there. They're not totally full of glossy pictures, and not just a bland reem of text. The maps are very useful, and highly detailed, and the recommendations for restaurants help you weed through all the tourist traps. That said, I've often followed their suggestions to restuarants or cafes that don't exist anymore. If LP could find a way to update their books every year, I'd be a bigger fan than I am right now. In this book, for instance, they tell you that the Morora is the only train station in Tanier, when the new Tanger Ville station was just recently opened. It could be a confusing moment if a cabby were to refuse to take you to a station that you don't know is nonexistent. But they do cover almost everything that you could think of in terms of transportation and navigating your way around. I like that with each city they put the population, so that you know what kind of a place you're going to. The overview maps also give you a way of figuring out where you are in relation to other places. It has its faults for sure, but I've not been able to find a much better series.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book does the job well..., May 15, 2007

By	JL (CO, USA) - See all my reviews

Yet again, the Lonely Planet puts together a pretty thorough guidebook that helps in exploring this remarkable destination. My experience showed that some of the info was a bit dated and a comparison with a fellow traveller's 2004 LP revealed that the two editions don't differ all that much. In their defense, things in Morocco tend not to be all that structured or consistent and would be hard to keep on top of. All in all, the book served me quite well. I will write them with the corrections that I noticed and hopefully the guide will continue to improve.