Ryad Myra is a very beautiful moroccan style hotel. We travelled for low season during Ramadan so we where the only two guests in the hotel. There was only 2 members of the staff working when we arrived. It was very hot to sit in the courtyard the is no ac and no ventilation. Our room and beds where comfortable and had AC but we had to climb a lot of stairs to get there. The Ryad had a Hammam which was not warm and the treatment i had was not great at all. We had included breakfast in our stay and it was very good, we also ate dinner there and the cous-cous was delicious. The location is close to the main road but the streets into the medina are narrow and dirty, I don't recommend it for women traveling alone. Once we reached the riad we never felt comfortable walking around.

Who knew behind the old doors of this dark alley when we arrived at night was an oasis of calm. Enter into a beautiful courtyard with helpful and attentive staff. Each room is different. Our suite was spacious and we really felt like we stepped back in time. Quiet riad except for the noise of a wedding outside one night. Restaurant re-opened when we arrived although the chioce was limited to chicken. Would recommend eating elsewhere for dinner. If you're not into carbs, breakfast there is not for you. Close to one of the gates leading into the Medina. Warning, very steep stairs with no railings leading to the rooms--if need request a ground floor room.

There is no pleasure in writing my first negative review on TripAdvisor, but it is certainly warranted.

The Riad Myra was by far my most expensive stay in a four week trip through seven cities in Morocco, costing me 435 Euros (about US $620) for four nights.

It was also the most unpleasant stay I have had in any city, in any hotel, in any country in my decades of visiting as many places on this planet that I can.

The welcome was warm after a delayed flight left me unexpectedly in Casablanca, but that was turned into shock when I saw my room. It was a tiny, dark and musty room with two single beds and a ceiling low enough to touch without difficulty. (I have enclosed two pictures of the room so that it is fairly represented. The single smoke detector can be seen in the ceiling, and the size of entire room can be estimated by using this as a reference point)

I was shocked, but said nothing until the next morning.

I was offered a better room, and reminded that I was paying for a room and not a suite, a relevant comment…except that the new room was not a suite by any definition of that term. It was an average room, nothing special for the cost, but one in which I would have been happy enough.

I was still sufficiently unhappy with the cost of the original room that I requested a partial refund as it did not remotely resemble the ones I saw on the Internet or what I would expect to get for $150 a night.

The manager gave me a look that was understandable in every language: “Not a chance!”

The second room would have been acceptable had I not arrived back in the early evening to hear what sounded like a loud nightclub immediately outside the window.

“It will stop around 11:00 pm,” I was told.

But 11:00 pm could be 12:00 am or 1:00am, and I had requested a quiet room in my reservation.

After telling me that the riad was booked, I moved back into my $150-a-night cubicle saying that I wanted a partial refund and that 435 Euros was neither a fair price for that room and nor was it as pictured on their website.

It is possible that they would have offered me a third choice for my third night, but I wasn’t interested. I had moved from Room A to Room B, and back to Room A, and I wasn’t interested in trying Room C or D. I would stay in my original room as there were only two nights left in my visit. I was not in the mood to move again, but would have just accepted the situation with a reasonable discount given the poor quality of the room.

The next morning I reiterated that this room was small, dark and about as far from the website pictures as possible, and that I wished a discount. I asked that the owner call me (a request I repeated several times) as I was concerned that the manager might offer me a 10 Euro reduction, an insufficient response, not fully realizing that the chance of even that minor reduction was far less then zero.

There was no reduction.

The next morning I waited for two hours (not an estimate) at breakfast without even being offered toast. I got my own coffee from a common table with coffee and milk on it. Finally when I went to the kitchen door to ask for some food, I was mildly rebuked and told to sit down, and it would be brought to me.

I realized that my unhappiness would not be tolerated. I was being treated incredibly rudely, even as I saw other guests receive their meals immediately upon sitting down. When I was leaving the next day (well before breakfast), I told the manager that this was not appropriate.

He said that I had mentioned that I liked a cup of coffee before breakfast.

True.

But it doesn’t take two hours for coffee, and no one seemed to think it did before that morning.

Any slightest doubt that I had mis-read the situation over breakfast disappeared on the fourth morning when I decided to leave as early as possible because I felt very uncomfortable being in the riad at all.

I was at the front door before 6:00 am when the manager approached me.

In what was a show of extreme meanness worthy of no one, let alone the manager of a place where I had paid 435 Euros, this petty, mean-spirited man wanted me to pay ten dirham for a small bottle of water that I had asked for the night before.

I told him that this was an insult and that I had paid 4,789 dirham for a tiny, musty room that was as far from their website’s pictures as possible. I told him that I was skipping breakfast because I refused to be treated rudely and made to sit for hours before even being offered toast, and that this should more then cover the cost of the water (not a single other hotel in Morocco charged me for water).

“Ten dirham” he said.

I was shocked.

He couldn’t be serious.

I was already outraged at the cost of my room; I had paid a substantial amount for a large closet; I was ignored when I asked for a discount or to speak to the owner; I had been kept waiting for two hours for breakfast the day before.

He had to be joking. The total cost was 4789 dirham for a large closet, and he wanted 10 more for water!

“Ten dirham please.”

“And”, he said “you ordered lunch at breakfast time.”

Yes, I had asked for some vegetables and had been given one single small side dish of potato salad or some other pre-made dish, but I prefer more than bread and cold pancakes for breakfast, and small requests like this are not uncommon in expensive hotels. And in any case, it was far closer to a small snack and wouldn’t fill a child up for “lunch”.

“Are you planning to charge me for this?” I asked.

“No” he said.

“But I want ten dirham for the water.”

I again said that he couldn’t be serious. This had to be a joke. No one can possibly rise to this level of rudeness or pettiness, although I realized that it was more unwarranted vindictiveness than anything else.

“Ten dirham, please.”

I again expressed my unhappiness with the riad, the cost of my room, the icy cold treatment I received after asking for a discount, and told him that he could not possibly really be asking me to pay for this small bottle of water that appears as a courtesy in most hotels around this planet.

“Ten dirham, please.”

“Ten dirham, please.”

I took out ten dirham, gave it to him, ran the short distance to a taxi, throwing the almost-full bottle of water in a box with garbage in it, and told the driver I was late for a train just to get him to take me as far away from this riad as quickly as possible.

I felt like I could have vomited.

I was so disgusted with what had happened in this riad that as I travelled from Fez to my other destinations in Morocco, I constantly checked to see how much further I was from that the lowest class, rudest, hotel I have even seen in my forty years of world travels.

And as much as I found the Moroccan people to be welcoming and kind, I suspect that this horrid riad will stick in my memory more than all the kindness I was shown, as unfair as this seems to both my memory of this trip and the generous and kind people of Morocco.

If you think that this is an exaggeration or a “bending of the truth”, it is not. If they tell you I was rude or somehow “deserved” this cold treatment, don’t believe them. A manager at Sofitel would be fired for this behavior.

If you would like my room, it was Room 4, and since I was told that the riad had two identical rooms, you can go with friends and both have the same experience. And since these riads usually have about ten or so rooms anyways, statistically you have a good chance of getting it even if you don’t ask.

I was not rude to the staff in any way at all, but I was certainly not happy with what I got for my 435 Euros, and was certainly astoundingly insulted by the manager rushing to the front door at 6:00 am to demand his 10 dirham, under I assume, the philosophy that no matter how unsatisfied a customer is, they can always be made even less satisfied.

My stay in the Riad Myra affected my whole trip. It certainly ruined the last two days in Fez, but left me with the ugliest memory of four decades as a determined traveler to “see the world”.

I am happy that others had better experiences here than I did here, but I also wouldn’t go to a restaurant where they spit into one customer’s face, ever if they if they were nice to ten others.

This is a gorgeous riad. It looks like a palace inside; it has been beautifully renovated. When we arrived we were greeted with hot mint tea and friendly staff. Our room was lovely, not huge but with a nice big bed, a small couch and table, two large floor pillows, a flat-screen TV and a wardrobe. The TV had at least 2 English channels which was a nice surprise. There was also a good heater, which was very useful since we arrived on a cold rainy day. The bathroom was fabulous,large, modern, clean, with a nice big bathtub and a hair dryer (rare in Moroccan riads). The only negative was that our room was on the 4th floor and the stairs were very steep! We didn't understand why we were put there because the riad seemed to be far from full.
There was wi-fi but it only worked in the lobby.
We had a wonderful dinner, one of the best meals we had in our 2-week stay in Morocco, and the service was excellent. It was raining and there was a small leak from the roof, but we moved and it was only a minor issue.
The breakfast was execellent too, included with the room. However, they offered us omelettes, which we accepted but later realized were an extra charge. They should explain this to their customers.
The location was very good for Fes, because there aren't many places where taxis are accesible, and the riad was a 1-minute walk from a little square where taxis could come. The square also had a post office and a couple of convenience stores.
We only stayed one night becuase it was expensive; they should have offered more of a discount because there didn't seem to be any other guests. Overall a lovely place to stay.