What do I do if it rains in Morocco?

The first thing I tell guests when the sky greys over is not to write the day off — Moroccan rain is usually short and theatrical rather than all-day, particularly outside the December-to-February window, and a downpour at breakfast is often blue sky by mid-morning. So the smart move is simply to flip your plan: pull the indoor things forward and push the gardens, ramparts and viewpoints to the clear spell that almost always comes. I have rerouted dozens of soggy mornings this way and rarely lost more than a couple of hours of actual sightseeing.

For the indoor hours themselves, Morocco is genuinely well stocked. In Marrakech I send people to the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, the Museum of Moroccan Arts in the Bahia or Dar Si Said, and the photography museum tucked in the medina; in Fes, the Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts and the Batha museum. Better still on a wet day is a riad cooking class — three or four hours learning a tagine and msemen in a warm kitchen, then eating the result, is one of my favourite rainy-day rescues and it never depends on weather.

The classic Moroccan answer to a grey day, though, is the hammam. There is something perfect about retreating into a hot, steamy bathhouse while it rains outside — book either a local public hammam for the authentic scrub or a spa hammam in a riad for the pampered version, and you emerge an hour later glowing and entirely indifferent to the weather. Pair it with a long, unhurried lunch somewhere with a covered courtyard and the afternoon takes care of itself. Much of the souk is roofed too, so shopping and haggling carry on regardless.

My honest guidance: keep a small wet-weather kit — a compact umbrella or light rain shell and shoes you do not mind getting muddy, because medina lanes and unpaved kasbah tracks turn slick fast — and treat rain as a cue to do the cultural, culinary and pampering things you might otherwise skip. The one place I would genuinely reshuffle for is the desert and the Atlas, where heavy rain can briefly affect mountain passes and dune access, so check conditions with your driver. Weather and museum opening hours change, so confirm both for your dates.