Riad Schanez

“ Great hotel and staff. Highly recommend.

“ It is a real old world Riad. Poor water supply, 12"+ steps on the stairs, a roof terrace/laundry, and a plunge pool that was freezing (lovely to dip your feet in after a walk around the city). Everything we were expecting.
The loose electrical sockets and intermittent showers were the only down side really. But in an old building such as this you can forgive the shower.
The staff are genuinely nice. Breakfast in set and the only option is not to have it. If you are English, take your own tea. Non available in the Riad, and difficult to find in the supermarket. (Liptons Yellow Label)
It is not to a European 4*, don't know where they get their star rating from. I would rate it as an English 2* B&B.

“ Top Tip: The Souks are a must. But even when they give you their best price just know you can get cheaper elsewhere. We bought Tajines in "Le Marjane" supermarket on "Mohamid 6" (the name of the road) for 38Dh. cheapest we found in the Souk was 90Dh. Better quality too.
Try not to answer everyone who says "Hello, remember me, I work in your hotel/Riad." They just want to be your guide, and get paid for their directions, chat, kind words of welcome.
The kids always want to be your friend, but if you give to one you'll have 100 very soon.
Always agree a price with the Taxi before you get in, only pay when you are getting out.
Taxi hire for the day is good value to go to the atlas mountains, or Agagdir. 600Dh seems to be the best price we could get. But remember payment after.

“ ''NOT RECOMMENDED DURING THE WINTER MONTHS''. This was our first experience of staying in a Riad so maybe we should not have been too suprised as we did not have anything to compare it with. During our visit the night time temperature was sometimes dropping to 2 deg.C and since our bedroom door opened directly onto an open air courtyard the room was very cold. We asked for a heater but none were available. We were also unfortunate in having some wet weather, this had the effect of not only making the room feel damp but also the bed.. There were sufficient blankets but some nights it took at least an hour to begin to get comfortable. Maybe the absence of an under blanket contributed to this, the bottom sheet was directly onto the mattress.
We had half board and had to eat our meals in the courtyard. There was very little cover from the weather and on two occasions when it was rainig hard we had to eat our meals with the rain pouring down just inches away. The kitchen was at the other end of the courtyard so food had to be carried through the rain. Needless to say we sat there in our thickest fleeces, also any hot food cooled down almost immediately and was certainly cold before you could finish the meal.
We have no doubt that in the summer months the shade and the coolness of the courtyard and bedrooms would be a relief from the summer temperatures.
A bar was advertised but we saw no sign of it and certaily no drinks were offered, but in fairness we did not ask since usually we just wanted to get back to our room and try and get warm.
This was our fourth visit to Marrakech at this time of year so next time it will be back to a convential hotel.
One report we read stated that it was a 7 minute walk to the Medina but a more accurate figure would be 25 minutes.

“ Top Tip: Unfortunately not. However once you were outside of the walls there were some quite pleasant walks taking in some parks a long well laid out avenues.