What's a good 2-week grand tour itinerary?

Two weeks is the sweet spot for seeing the real breadth of Morocco, so I build a clockwise grand loop that strings the highlights together without ever doubling back. We land in Casablanca for the Hassan II Mosque, push to Rabat for the Kasbah of the Udayas and the Chellah ruins, then head north to the blue-washed lanes of Chefchaouen for two nights. Starting in the north means you ease in through the cooler, greener side of the country before the heat and grandeur of the south.

The heart of the early trip is Fes — I give it two full nights so you can lose yourself in the medieval medina with a guide, watch the tanneries, and eat properly. From Fes we cross the Middle Atlas through the cedar forests and Barbary apes near Ifrane and Azrou, then descend the Ziz valley to Merzouga and Erg Chebbi for a desert-camp night. This stretch is the great transition — from imperial city to palm oasis to Saharan dune in a single, cinematic day of driving.

The middle of the loop is pure landscape. We trace the Route of a Thousand Kasbahs west: the Todra Gorge with its sheer red walls, the Dades valley's switchbacks, the Rose Valley, and the film-set fortress of Aït Ben Haddou near Ouarzazate. Then over the dramatic Tizi n'Tichka pass into the High Atlas, where I like to slot a night at a mountain kasbah so the gorges-to-Marrakech leg doesn't become one exhausting marathon drive.

We give Marrakech two or three nights to do it justice — souks, palaces, gardens, a cooking class — before a final two nights on the Atlantic in Essaouira to decompress. Across fourteen days you've touched all four imperial cities, the Rif, the Sahara, the gorges, two mountain ranges, and the coast. It's a lot of ground, but spaced over two weeks no single day feels punishing, and you leave feeling you've genuinely seen the country.