I was so disapointed as I had looked forward to visiting this city for so long.
Yes it has some beautiful buildings and museums but our anxiety at going out ruined it.

But I can also safely say that I have never felt THREATENED anywhere, just varying cadences of annoyed …. Having said that, a lifetime of working and travelling in the orient (from India to Morocco) has taught me a few simple things:

When in Rome, do a the Romans do. Simple.

No short skirts, shorts, sleeveless blouses or tight t-shirts ….

In most Arab countries I usually carry a shawl, scarf or something …. if I feel it warranted, I cover my hair ….

I must admit, the latter has FOR ME always done the trick.

But then again, I have never really been a tourist in these countries and maybe that made me a little less of a target.

And another thing: While young Arab males no doubt trawl the tourist haunts for female “prey”, there are enough WHITE WOMEN looking for an oriental holiday adventure. And that often gives those boys the idea that all western women are like that … sadly so.

On balance, I would certainly not tell anybody NOT to travel to Morocco. It´s a beautiful country and has – like any other place on earth – princes and crooks alike.

As the Moroccans say: Basah! … Really!

Remember the portion of this thread that says…
“Do you recall the Comments section of my “Women, Men, and Brazilian Bikinis” post, where Xixarro said, “We can’t be expecting women to go thank every man that passes her ‘normally’, can we”? Well, it is so bad here, the harassment is so frequent and omnipresent, that every time we passed a man walking towards us, all I would think was, “Please don’t say anything. Please don’t bother us. Please don’t come near us”; and when the man passed without incident, we really DID feel compelled to genuinely thank him for “acting normal”! It was ridiculous; a man just gave us directions to somewhere without pressuring us to follow him or attempting to stick to us, and we spent the next five minutes exclaiming over how nice he was.”

Beautiful. Its so true for me that I really really did give in.

I picked the nicest one and the one that just happened to be one of the most intelligent and most compassionate men I had ever met in my life. He never once hit on me. I hit on him. He was born in the sand dunes. No joke; he is from the Sahara. Beautiful boy who told me he would keep me safe as long as I was by his side. He treated me like a princess and when I left he wouldn’t let me cry that my relationship with my boyfriend and his son had ended because it was all an experience.

He told me never to cry about him and just to be happy that we could “share a moment together.”

I will never forget him. But I will also never forget that my relationship was destroyed in Morocco.

I just wanted to feel safe. For that, I had to sacrifice my relationship.

Haha, it’s always nice to be related to!

And yes, EVERYONE is accosted from a tourism point of view, but I’m pretty sure in terms of random men loitering on sidewalks, it’s just us women that get all the luck. XD

And yes, we had the 10-year old boys showing you the way out then asking for money, too! And they kept asking for more even after we gave them some, but then we actually said to them it wasn’t fair because we never asked for them to come and had no choice in the matter.

And yes, the more people I talk to the more I think it’s mostly Marrakech rather than Morocco in general…other friends told me that Fez and Casablanca, for example, were better, and that Marrakech was actually disliked the most by all three of them while they liked the other cities.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your experience!