Morocco - Short itinerary advise

Rick is right-start at Rabat and then do Fez with the time you have. Fez's Media is more crowded,bustling, and crazy then Merrerakesh, along with the leather dyeing that you can visit, and I'm pretty sure you can easily train to both from Tangier. Just make sure you hire a guide to the Media in Fez or you'll never find your way out.

Good idea, wrong execution.

Yes, by all means, get beyond Tangier. In fact, you should skip Tangier entirely. You should also skip Rabat and Casablanca. On a short visit, none of those places are worth bothering with.

The Top Ten things to see in Morocco are:
Marrakech
Marrakech
Marrakech
Marrakech
Marrakech
Fes
Fes
Fes
Fes
Fes

Everything else is further down the list - and Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca would be WAY down the list (Meknes, Essaouira, Todra Gorge, Ourzazate, the deep desert and other things would beat them). But you don't have time for those.

If all you can spare for Morocco is 2-3 days, then I'd suggest you simply do this: fly to Marrakech (or Fes) from any one of the dozen cities scattered around Spain and western Europe that low cost airlines go from. You can fly to Marrakech from Europe for crazy dirt cheap - as little as US$25 - a lot less than it would cost you to take that ferry and waste all your time wandering through Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca, which have little of interest.

Fly to Marrakech. Stay there a day or two. Fly back. You can even do this "open jaws" to use Marrakech as a "bridge" to get you between two cities in Europe for less than it would cost to take the train directly between them!

Now, if there's any way you can eek out another couple days, a much better way to do this would be: Fly to Marrakech. Spend a day. Take the train from Marrakech to Fes. Spend a day. Fly out from Fes to wherever you want to get to next in Europe.

Don't waste your time with any of the cities on the north coast. The stuff you want to see are much further inland - Marrakech and Fes (and beyond, if you have time - but you don't). Go straight to the Morocco you want to actually see, and skip all the stuff you would have to slog through to get there.

Rick is right-start at Rabat and then do Fez with the time you have. Fez's Media is more crowded,bustling, and crazy then Merrerakesh, along with the leather dyeing that you can visit, and I'm pretty sure you can easily train to both from Tangier. Just make sure you hire a guide to the Media in Fez or you'll never find your way out.

Respectfully, I have to strongly disagree with much of the above.

Yes, get past the stuff in the north. But Rabat? Sorry, no way I would waste any time there on a short trip, it's an ordinary city, an industrial and administrative center with little of interest to a visitor.

Trains from the coast cities take a long time to get to the great cities in the interior. OP doesn't have time to waste with that.

Yes to Fes, it's amazing, other-worldly, and absolutely worth experiencing. You'll never look at leather the same way after going there...

But no, no, no, the often-repeated warnings not to go into the medina without a guide (or you'll never find your way out) are nonsense. Sorry. It's safe, it's simple, and while the streets may appear confusing at first (and for a while) it's not that disorienting, and anyone with any sense can do just fine by wandering around in the medina of either Marrakech or Fes - if you wander for a while, you will start to recognize places you've seen before, and you will eventually come back to your entry point. It's no different from wandering the small backstreets of Venice - Rick's advice for there is the same advice you should follow when you walk into the medina of Marrakech or Fes: relax, stop worrying, you're on an "island" (in a walled old neighborhood) and it doesn't matter if you "get lost" for a while. You will eventually wander back out to the same place you entered. Use common sense, and keep your eyes open. There's nothing to fear in there, no danger. It's just an old neighborhood, with families, kids, shopkeepers living there, same as anywhere else. You do not need a guide in there, period. Really.

Rabat is better than Casablanca, but so is almost everywhere else, because Casablanca is a very modern, westernized city.

If you can't bear to delay Morocco until a later trip when you have time to see more of it, I agree that the most efficient way to see some of the best of the country is to fly in and out. I, too, liked Fes most of all. Personally, I hate mid-trip flights because each one disrupts the better part of a day. You're talking about losing most of two days to fly into and out of Morocco. I wouldn't do it just to have one full day on the ground there. I'm sure there are places in Spain where you could spend those three days.

I totally agree with David.
No guide is necessary, you can get lost in the Medina, but you'll eventually find your way out. It's not that big and getting "lost" is part of the experience of walking tiny streets. Nothing will happen and it's a wonderful place! Definitely recommend Fes, and then Marrakech.

Ditto: Marrakech & Fes. There's good guidebooks on Morocco, like Lonely Planet's.

Thanks all for your input, it was very helpful. My current thinking is to spare one more day for the Moroccan portion of my trip (for a total of 4 days). It’ll be in between the Spain and Portugal pieces, flying non-stop from Sevilla to Marrakesh and then another direct flight from Fez to Lisbon.

ll be in between the Spain and Portugal pieces, flying non-stop from Sevilla to Marrakesh and then another direct flight from Fez to Lisbon.

This would be perfect.

Just be aware that the low cost airlines typically do not fly every route on every day, so you need to plan carefully to ensure that on the day that you plan to go from A to B, that your airline actually does fly that route on that day. A lot of the flights are every other day or 2X per week. So you need to check carefully, and be prepared to shift your travel dates forward or back by a day or two if needed. But if you can make the dates work, it would be a great way to go. It even solves the challenge that many travelers encounter of finding an efficient way to get between Spain and Portugal. It's ironic that one way to do that involves flying to Morocco, but if you can pull it off, good on you.

Tangier is not the nicest place. It's more aggressively touristy because of all the day trippers there. Don't go to Marrakech unless you are flying. If you take the ferry from Tarifa to Tangier, go to Chefchaouen! You could also stop in Tetouan, which the bus goes to anyway. It's definitely more "Moroccan" than Rabat or Casablanca (although I LOVED Rabat, Casablanca didn't impress me). You could also go to Fes, which is about a 4 hour train ride from Tangier, but I do not trust the trains in Morocco. (Especially if you're on a tight schedule). You only have 2-3 days, so take the bus to Chef. The journey is about 3 hours from Tangier.

I'll also add that if you go to Fes, it's good to hire a local guide for a half day. We arranged this through our Riad (Riad Myra, which I wholeheartedly recommend) for our first morning there. He was able to take us around to see the main sites and show us a few things that we otherwise wouldn't see. After that, we just wandered on our own, but it was helpful to already recognize some landmarks for when we did get a little lost. (Over 8000 streets and alleys, it's easy to do, but that's part of the fun!)