Name: Riad Anne de Mekns
Address: 4 Derb Sidi M'Barek Bab Bardaïne,Derb Sidi M'Barek, Meknes Medina, Meknes Medina, Meknes Medina, 50030, Morocco
Rating: 9

Smoke-free property

General

Non-smoking rooms

Room service

Rooms

Internet access

Internet

Airport transportation

Transfer services

Transfer

French

Arabic

Languages Spoken

Sun Deck

Recreation

Solarium

Beauty and wellness

Pets Not Allowed

Pets

Location

At the hotel

Fes-Saiss Airport

Riad Anne de Mekns

Meknes Medina

Magnificent Riyadh. We were greeted by a charming lady who came to pick us up at the medina door and was available throughout the stay. It is a quiet and popular neighborhood opposite the bustle of Ladhim Square. Breakfast is cozy. The room is spacious upstairs. The terrace brings calm after the bustle of the relative souk. Meknes reveals its charms to those who want to take a little time to discover it. And this Riyadh is one of them. Bravo. Keep going.

Calm and cheerful.

Anne was absent and it was a charming young Moroccan woman, speaking very well French, who welcomed us. Despite her warning, we chose the room on the first floor: we were upset because it was very hot and it was impossible to sleep open the windows because of the noise of the street until very late. Too bad because the room was very pleasant. The second night she offered us a ventilator but, as a coincidence, the temperature was cool enough for us. A small lunch on the cozy terrace. A climate would be welcome but I would say that it would denature the riad. It is located in the non-tourist part of the city and gives it a more authentic cachet.

In Search of Authenticity

This is a great stay in a very comfortable Riyadh, with large spaces, a beautiful terrace where we enjoyed good breakfast and discovered beautiful views... Anne and Abdel-Ali are really nice and generous people, they have been able to welcome us, advise us and guide us so that we can fully enjoy our visit to Morocco.

Very comfortable and inexpensive Riad

The Riad Anne is located in the quiet old town of Meknes, close to a city gate where there is a guarded parking lot. However, you still have to walk about 200 m. The owner, Mme Anne, is French. She has beautifully renovated and decorated the small Riad, e.g. Orthoceras-fossil marble washbasins.

Meknes is worth a trip - Riad Anne offers a beautiful environment for it

Anne is charming and we had a very good stay in her Riyadh. She had the delicacy of changing rooms so that we could be calm and not disturbed by guests who left early in the morning. So we enjoyed a suite instead of a simple room. The decoration is sober and elegant. The breakfast taken on the terrace overlooking the surroundings is a real time of fun. Moreover, it is cozy. Anne is a friendly hostess and with little care. A guarded parking lot is nearby. We are happy with our choice and will return to it on our next getaway to Meknes. Thanks Anne.

The weekend in MEKNES

Anne and her companion are adorable, we felt like family during this stay. They will be a valuable help to you in helping you organize the exploration of Meknes, so do not hesitate to ask them for some advice. Regarding the Riyadh, it is very clean and quiet, the bedding was perfect and the little dej lived up to our expectations. We had selected this riad thanks to tripadvisor but reading comments, I was afraid of becoming a future poultry killer.. and finally we did not hear the scream (it may have crossed the path of a chef chef...) For the routers, the Meknes deserves a war to stop there but a long thanksgiving is still recommended for the woman 2 thousand nights.

one of the most beautiful discoveries in Meknes

The young managers of the small Riad were very hospitable and kind from the start. Our first-floor room was comfortable and functional, although the bathroom would need a slight refurbishment. The windows on the street make the noise of the alley heard in the evening. But the kindness of the guests compensates for these small inconveniences. On request, you can dine on the cool terrace. Great breakfast. Good location, easily reachable from the nearby parking lot.

Kindness and Hospitality

We were thrilled for two nights in and around the Riad of Anne. The rooms are absolutely clean, generous and very nicely decorated. Anne is a very very nice hostess, incredibly helpful and, yes, she speaks almost only French, and vice versa, it's probably also to the guests at least to know a little of the language spoken in the country where you're a guest. Breakfast is very tasty and fresh, there's also an opportunity to eat out at night, which we've happily enjoyed, since the food Sarah cooked was the most delicious we've ever had in Morocco. The prices are absolutely reasonable, cheap if you're talking with so many others (more damaging than you'd expect in Europe, but of course, everything else in the city of Medina and the surrounding area is at least a little more convenient to say).

The atmosphere of well-being

Anne’s cute house is a decent place to stay, but if I could have my Moroccan holiday all over again I would have ditched the night in Meknes and stayed an extra night in Fez. Visiting Volubilis is an excellent experience and was a highlight, but you can easily do that from Fez, or en-route to another destination, bypassing Meknes altogether.

Judging from the infrequent reviews of this accommodation on Tripadvisor, it seems that Anne doesn’t get that many visitors, and now I can understand why. Meknes itself is basically an uninteresting and semi-unpleasant place – the ‘sights’ as they are pale in comparison to those in Fez, and the main square is just awful; full of snake ‘charmers’ blowing loudly on their flutes at some comatose snakes, chained up monkeys wearing Lionel Messi football shirts, peacocks, beggars, and a souk full of cheap Chinese shoes and junk. The Dar Jamai museum that Lonely Planet describes as ‘one of the best in Morocco’ is a joke – it’s a run down, scraggly assortment of bits of clothing, household items and weapons with no English labelling. I can’t imagine how other reviewers can describe this place as ‘amazing’. The fabled Bab Mansour gate is impressive, but it certainly doesn’t justify making Meknes a destination. Coachloads of tourists just stop here, snap the obligatory photo, and zoom off again. 

Adding insult to injury, there’s also no good restaurants in and around the Medina – we ate a half grilled chicken on the main square for late lunch and that was decent, but we couldn’t find something good and local for dinner that didn’t involve being picked up and escorted somewhere else. And by then we were a bit fed up of the place.  

Anne’s Riad is located away from main medina area in a barren & dusty part of town, and the Riad’s location near Bab Berdina is distinctly run-down and charmless, and was the only place in Morocco that I felt vaguely uneasy about leaving my car overnight. The area might be ‘authentic’ and in a ‘neighbourhood’, but so were other places we stayed in Morocco that were much nicer than this. In and of itself, the Riad is quite attractive – our room was the ‘Pink Suite’ and it was a good size, comfortable, and nicely furnished. Anne also has a rooftop terrace which has some semblance of a view, and is a good place to sip tea, nibble cookies, and unwind in the evening – and for breakfast. So no issues with the accommodation, apart from 2 niggles. The first is the breakfast, which I thought was poor – consisting of bread, pancakes and jam. We had to ask for eggs as they weren’t offered (and they are nearly everywhere else we stayed), and the coffee was lukewarm and unpalatable. It doesn’t take much to provide guests with good coffee – and rightly or wrongly I always equate poor coffee with poor attention to detail and quality.

The second niggle is that if you don’t speak French, then you can’t easily communicate, as Anne speaks no English. I imagine that if you want to set yourself up in a guesthouse with international visitors, then you should make the effort to learn enough language to converse with people from the non-European world – but alas not. And although it might seem like a bit of fun to try out your schoolkid French and make lots of hand gestures, it wears thin, and becomes quite frustrating quite quickly.

Riad Anne de Meknes is a quirky and comfortable place, and Anne herself seems like a sweet lady, but the question really is why you would want to stay here in the first place.

Torn between Good and Bad...

This is the fourth of eleven Moroccan accommodation reviews, following the third in Chefchaouen, and preceding our stay in Fes. Stayed on 22nd to 24th April, 2014.

Our stay in the number one Trip Advisor rated riad is kept up in Anne’s place. So far, we have stayed in inns run by English, American and Spanish. Here the owner is French!

By far the accommodation at Riad Anne is the most luxurious so far. Anne is a former fonctionnaire from Paris. Meknes is not a place to stay for most travellers, who stay in Fes, and come for a short visit as a part of their Volubilis excursion. It’s really too bad, because the medina here is much cleaner and less crowded than in Fes, and there are enough sights to warrant a stay. We stayed for two nights, and were grateful for it.

Back to the riad – it is a formal mansion. Our suite is large in Moroccan standards, and the furnishings of the entire building are refined. The shower is solar-heated and takes a while, but runs well once it starts. The rate is not cheap, but well worth what you pay. Anne does not speak much English, but we liked her and the guide she booked so much we took them all out for dinner! We dined at the Riad El Ma, and it was delightful. There is something quirky about the rating – Riad Anne is rated the number one hotel, and Riad El Ma the number one B&B and Inn. To us, Anne is a true B&B, since she does not offer meals except breakfast, while El Ma’s chef is already noted in Trip Advisor for her fabulous cooking. 

Never mind, to each Riad, accolades for your respective successes!

Riad Anne de Mekns

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