When people ask me what my best travel tip is, it is hard to narrow it down to just one. The same goes when I am asked about my favorite place in the world. I love so many places, and living between my hometown Copenhagen, Berlin and NYC, it’s simply impossible to pick.
Back to my best travel tip. A good choice for my best travel tip would definitely be to “go local”, in the sense of getting to know real people that actually live in your travel destination, eating local and traditional food, and learning about the local culture, just to mention a few ways one can go local when traveling.
To me, this is simply the best way to learn and experience traveling in the most authentic way. Around this time a year ago, I met a boy and fell head over heels in love with him. We decided to go away together for a few days to the dreamy destination Marrakech in Morocco. Long story short, it ended up being a very long trip from Berlin to Marrakech, and when we finally arrived it way passed our bedtime and we were starving.
At the airport we stood quite unsure about what exactly to do – that was until a very short guy came toward us and asked us in good English if we needed help. Since both of us had experienced a good amount of traveling throughout our lives, we knew to be friendly but also careful with who to talk to, trust and go with. Although we were a little reluctant, we ended up joining the short man in his van as he invited us, when we explained to him that we were on the verge of starvation.
He said that everything was closed at this time, and he knew about one place that we could be lucky to find food at. The hunger took over the sensibility and we jumped in his car and drove through the dark streets of Marrakech. On our way we looked at each other and started laughing, halfway thinking that hopefully, we would survive this. A few minutes later we arrived at a very narrow alleyway, and the short guy insisted on driving through it. At the end of the narrow alley, we saw it – a very – to put it nicely – old looking kitchen and a lot of men hanging around. To say the least – it looked very obscure.
We looked at each other again with thoughts such as “can we really eat here?”, but again hunger won over sensibility and we had the short man order for us. The guys in the kitchen were happy and started cooking for us, and a few minutes later, dinner was served. The food looked like the place – obscure, but that was only until we began eating and tasted the yumminess. Skewers in all kinds with delicious marinades. We ate till we couldn’t eat anymore while being entertained by all the friendly guys, and last but not least the short man offered us a ride to our hotel.
We passed out of tiredness and woke up to a beautiful day the morning after. While having breakfast the concierge came to us and told us that there was a man outside waiting for us. We went out to see, and to our big surprise, it was the short man from the night before. He said: “come with me, I want to show you the mountains”. We thought: “could this get any better or more authentic?” and went straight in the car to go with him.
On the way, we stopped to pick up his son, had an amazing Moroccan crepe with cheese and honey and tea to drink. We also learned that the short man lived several years in Sweden and that he spoke fluent Swedish, so I was actually able to communicate with him in Danish and Swedish. We finally made it all the way to the Atlas mountains. We spent hours there, visited different craft workshops, met the short man’s Berber family who lived in a Berber village in the mountains, took a tour with them, hiked the Atlas mountains, and last but not least, we ended our day in the nature with real Moroccan tagine food, Berber music and one of the best travel experiences ever.
When traveling, there is a very thin line between meeting new people but also having to be careful with who to talk to, but this time it was definitely lucky that we went with it!
- Caroline Sølver
- : Caroline was born and bred in Copenhagen, now living between NYC and Copenhagen, where she runs her own lifestyle blog Silverstories.dk, podcast Silver Talks as well as the cafe Skål in Brooklyn. Caroline aims to inspire through personal blog posts. Caroline has also published a guidebook on Berlin and is currently working on two more - on NYC and Copenhagen.
- : https://www.silverstories.dk
- : https://www.facebook.com/silverstoriesblog/
- : https://www.instagram.com/carolinesoelver/
- : On Silverstories, Caroline shares great insider's guides to cool locations and destinations all over the world.
- : adult_(19_and_over_as_of_31st_december_2019)
- : This is the first time this story has been published.