As I was finishing up traveling Europe for a few months in the winter and spring of 2026 I needed to go somewhere else. I had spent nearly 90 days inthe Schengen area on a tourist visa, so I needed to go to countries outside that area.

When it came to choosing a destination, I was looking at a few different options. I was looking at England, Scotland, Morocco, and Albania. All of them seemed like great options to me, but weather was a huge factor. The location I wanted to go to most was Scotland because I wanted to check out Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have family heritage from Scotland and so it has been a dream of mine to go to someday. However when I looked at the weather, it looked like it was going to be rather rainy, and I was hoping for warmer dryer weather in the next destination I was going to.

That led me to look a little further south and a little further east. I also looked at destinations in Central and South America, but I didn't feel like it was quite the right time to go there with just one month of travel before needing to be back in the United States. So I kept my sights on somewhere south of Europe or in Eastern Europe not included in the Schegen area.

One of my friends recommended Morocco to me. She had been and liked it, so it was somewhere I felt good about going to. She recommended a few different cities. Since I was going to be traveling for a short amount of time, I wanted to stick to one location. I prefer slow travel, so anything less than a month, I would like to be in one destination.

Because I was a little nervous about visiting a country that has a very different culture than mine and a culture that I'm not used to, I wanted to stick to a major city where other tourists would be. I wanted there to be the potential for people to speak English, and that’s exactly what I got with Marrakech, Morocco.