'£50 for a flight to Marrakech!' My boyfriend Sam shouted up the stairs.

Having just earned £150 for a few days of last minute emergency christmas waitressing I yelled back down:

'Book it!'

I had wanted to go to Marrakech ever since I had heard that you could pick up glasses of fresh orange juice for the equivalent of about 30p. Travelling for me is tasting, smelling and cooking: every country I head to I pick up a cook-book or try to take a class and learn how to cook the local cuisine.

Having always been partial to a tagine and some olives, Morocco ticked every box I had when looking for a long weekend away. Added to that 25 degrees in January and some cheap riad accomodation and we had the perfect christmas vacation. I suppose this was compensation for not being able to make my university Surf trip to surf berbere, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

The flight in was stunning. Skimming the dusty red earth and mud houses that surrounded Marrakech it felt as though we were entering some kind of lunar-scape. Desperate to get into the city we began to walk with our back packs into the city, past roaring motorbikes and manic taxi drivers who were all screeching in the road and turning back on themselves trying to give us lifts. We kept walking, the sweet heat not diluting our enthusiasm to head into the city a pied. Eventually however, when Sam's GPS was effectively flashing WARNING WARNING we realised that we'd been hiking further away from the city, so we hitched a taxi and got into the centre for the equivalent price of about £4.

'You look like a happy dog' the taxi driver eventually managed to convey to me in a mixture of Berber and Arabic, as I say with my head hanging out of the window. Smells of diesel drifted into the window, and wafts of mint swept into my nose as we past carts stacked with the herb pulled by tired looking donkeys, who stood in the sun and flicked flies away from them with their shabby tales. The stench of manure alerted us to a herd of camels, who were flirtatiously blinking their heavy brown eyes against the glare of the sun and I felt that had I been a dog my eyes would have been up, my tongue out and my tail wagging.

The sun was beginning to set as we got out of the taxi. The clay buildings smelt warm and the red material glowed after basking in the sun all day.

'This place is like a fairy tale' I said to Sam, who was drifting along the cool winding passages, kept air-conditioned by the steep sided buildings.

Hawkers tried to thrust lamps into our hands, and the smell of barbequed meat and vegetables tickled our noses and made us hungry on every street corner.

Eventually we found our riad, which was tucked out of the way down a maze of little red alleyways. Three women, whose life ambition was evidently to never stop cleaning the floor of the riad promptly opened the door and without another word began to clean the sparkling tiles once more.