Riad Dar Ziryab

“Good to stay. Eat out.”

A beautiful riad, excellent located for good food and shops near. Staff helpful and welcoming. Very well kept and clean. They have three small dogs who are well behaved. The garden is pleasant. Beds a little hard for us, and many barking dogs at night in the area, take ear plugs! Eating in is not… more

A beautiful riad, excellent located for good food and shops near. Staff helpful and welcoming. Very well kept and clean. They have three small dogs who are well behaved. The garden is pleasant. Beds a little hard for us, and many barking dogs at night in the area, take ear plugs! Eating in is not good value as there are many places to eat locally where the food is very much better for a lot less.

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“I would NOT recommend Riad Dar Ziryab”

The Riad building and grounds are in traditional Moroccan style and decor. Our room (Deluxe Suite) was quite spacious. We've stayed for 3 nights and our room was cleaned daily, bed linens and even the bathrobes were changed daily. This Riad is conveniently located in close proximity to a main stree… more

The Riad building and grounds are in traditional Moroccan style and decor. Our room (Deluxe Suite) was quite spacious. We've stayed for 3 nights and our room was cleaned daily, bed linens and even the bathrobes were changed daily. This Riad is conveniently located in close proximity to a main street with many restaurants and cafes. That is all for the positive side. On the negative side: The breakfast quality is terrible. Waiting time to get any food on your table is at least 30 min. The servers at the breakfast are the same young girls that clean the rooms (looks and feels like cheap labour). There are three dogs on the premisses that walk free and barking all night long. One of the nights we couldn't sleep at all because of these dogs. The Riad does offer a dinner menu, however the price is unreasonably hight. Walk 100 meters to a main street and you will pay fraction of that price. One more detail - Keep in mind that this Riad doesn't except credit cards. The conclusion: I would NOT recommend Riad Dar Ziryab

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“Very mixed opinion...”

This stay was my 60th birthday present, so I did not know about the price until the time of check out. I had asked for a « short stay out of France, just to mark the occasion since I had been busy travelling extensively around the world during the first semester. Plus: The three young girls who at… more

This stay was my 60th birthday present, so I did not know about the price until the time of check out. I had asked for a « short stay out of France, just to mark the occasion since I had been busy travelling extensively around the world during the first semester. Plus: The three young girls who attended us during 5 days were always cheerful and pleasant, we really enjoyed having to deal with them daily The owner is a pleasant and cultured man, he tells a lot of (rather) interesting stories, he has studied and travelled so you feel like you can share a lot with him The excursions were organised from the ryad by the owner, we did not have to call ourselves - The dinners we had at the ryad were from very good to excellent - The ryad has been build using traditional materials and techniques (as we were told) and is pleasant to stay at Against: I am not used to complaining on internet but the occasion was special and I did not feel at ease making remarks on site while I was invited and expected to appreciate the gift. But since I am a seasoned traveller used to all kinds of from medium to luxurious accomodations I think I cannot say nothing The three young girls are awfully nice, they only know a few words of French and hardly speak any English or other languages except their mother tongue and I must say that when we ordered wine, the only information we had about the three choices of red wine were « 22, 26 or 29 euros » ! Fortunately we are used to Moroccan wines, so we knew what we paid for but I imagine that for other tourists it must have been frustrating to chose a price only and not a wine according to its qualities. The owner is pleasant, etc. but has the same defects than most touristic guides : he likes to give talks, most of them being interesting, but he talks of himself a lot and hardly listens so there is hardly any interraction between the client (at least us) and him. The guide he recommended was the same type !, I know that my husband had called to say my birthday would be during our stay. I don’t think he expected much, but I must say that I found not having even a free cup of mint tea very mean. All the more that upon our arrival, a very strong sewer smell emanated from the bathroom of our « Royal Suite », it was late in the night so we did not say anything and slept with the door on the balcony open but in the morning my husband informed the owner about this horrible smell. The owner calmy said that it happened sometimes, it was a problem of the city and not of his house, so there was nothing to do, it came and went. Since we did not spend much time in the room, and the ryad seemed to be full because of the « Rallye du Maroc » teams filling up the rooms, we spent the following nights with the bathroom door open on the balcony, in order to minimize the strengh of the smell. The two meals we had at the ryad were delicious. But when I discovered the price at the end of the stay, when I had to use my credit card (for an unknown reason - in fact, the young girl did a mistake with the terminal, but it is not a problem - my husband's card which worked everywhere did not work and he had to ask me to pay the bill !), I was appalled : 160 euros for two dinners for two people and two bottles of wine, that was really overpriced ! I thought the meal would have cost about 20 euros (drinks not included), not more ! There is nothing written in the ryad, no menu card, the owner explains there is a « small menu » and there you go for 35 euros (drinks not included) ! Without the salad the menu costs 25 euros (soup + main + fruit salad), which is also very expensive (we like everything so it is not a problem but one might know there is no choice). As for the mint tea and cookies served at the end of the dinner, I have never seen them so I guess that if yo ask for it, you’ll have to pay extra dirhams. To make a comparison, the cheaper excellent menu of the « Maison Blanche » restaurant costs 45 euros and is a a real gastronomic moment, so the meals at the ryad are really overpriced ! I can name at least 15 restaurants with a 35 euro menu in Paris which have higher standards than the Dar Zyriab and with a real service. In a country where you know that drinking tab water can lead you directly and for your entire stay to the toilet, I found it very petty not to find a free bottle of mineral water as a courtesy (it does not go about the price, it goes about the token gesture). Excursions : my husband had called in advance, he used the tourist agency the owner of the ryad works with five times (taxi from and to the airport, private taxi for three days and guide for one day) but when he had to start from scratch as the owner seemed to have forgotten what had been settled a few days before our arrival. One excursion was, according to me, a « light rip-off » : the owner recommended to make a detour to visit a troglodyte village with a special guide living there. The visit consisted in seeing a waterfall and drinking mint tea in a troglodyte house with the « guide », walking rapidly through the village with him them going to the medina with him and walking through this medina with him again, them 30 euros and bye bye then go on with the driver for the rest of the tour (which was the "normal" price for the private day tour. So outrageous price again (and not historical explanations from the "guide", just hearing that the Michelin Guide had wrote to him years ago and Gilbert Montagné had drunk his tea!). After four nights sleeping (badly) with the door ajar and being fed up with the sewer smell (imagine being 60 years old and waking up with your husband saying « Happy Birthday » to you with the feeling you have slept in a gutter !), I went to see the owner and asked if everybody in the ryad had the same problem since I could not imagine other tourists being as tolerant as us ! He said we should have talked about this problem at the beginning of our stay, which my husband did ! The owner did not seem to remember ! When we came back from our last excursion, the bedroom smell a kind of unindentified perfume, we spent at least a good night but when we left in the morning, the bad smell had already shown up again. So why this title : mixed ? Because I think that everything over this ryad is overstated, I took the time to read carefully one by one all the reviews on the net (Booking, Trip Advisor, etc.) and it seems that some people think like me, and strange enough, these people come from big cities (NY, Paris, etc.) where they would never accept meals at this value for money where they live!

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