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<font size="2">The Rough Guide to Morrocco is like having a local friend plan your trip!

Make the most of your holiday with The Rough Guide to Spain.

The sight and sound of flamenco, when the guitar laments and heels stamp the boards, or cante jondo, Andalucía's blues, as it mournfully pierces the smoke-laden gloom of a backstreet café, also tell you there's something unique about the people here. The Muslim influence on speech and vocabulary, a stoical fatalism in the face of adversity, and an obsession with the drama of death are all facets of the modern Andalucian character. Contrastingly, the andaluces also love nothing more than a party and the colour and sheer energy of the region's countless and legendary fiestas - always in traditional flamenco costume worn with pride - make them among the most exciting in the world. The romerías, wild and semi-religious pilgrimages to honour local saints at country shrines are yet another excuse for a jamboree. And in quieter moments there are few greater pleasures than to join the drinkers at a local bar winding down over a glass of traditional fino (dry sherry from Jerez), while ! nibbling tapas - Andalucía's great titbit invention. Few places in the world can boast such a wealth of natural wonders in so compact an area. The mighty Guadalquivir river which crosses and irrigates the region from its source in the Cazorla mountains of Jaén in the northeast, reaches the sea 250 miles away at the dune-fringed beaches and marismas of the Coto Doñana National Park, Europe's largest and most important wildlife sanctuary. To the east and towering above Granada, the peaks of the Sierra Nevada include the Spanish peninsula's highest mountain, snowcapped for most of the year, while twenty miles away and close to the sweltering beaches, sugar cane thrives. This crop was another contribution to Europe by the Moors, along with oranges, almonds, aubergines, saffron and most of the spices now used to flavour the region's cooking which features an astonishing variety of seafood. Nestling in the folds of the same mountains are the valleys of the Alpujarras, a wildly picturesque region dotted with dozens of mountain villages! , many of them little changed since Moorish times. Further east again come the gulch-ridden badlands and lunar landscapes of Almería's deserts, sought out by film-makers and astronomers for the clearest skies in Europe.

On the coast it's easy to despair. Extending to the west of Málaga is the Costa del Sol, Europe's most developed resort area, with its beaches hidden behind a remorseless density of concrete hotels and apartment complexes. But even here the real Andalucía is still to be found if you're prepared to seek it out: go merely a few kilometres inland and you'll encounter the timeless Spain of white villages and wholehearted country fiestas. Travel further, both east and west, along the coast and you'll find some of the best beaches in all Spain, along the Costa de la Luz, near Cádiz, or the Costa de Almería.

Andalucía's sunshine image - projected across the world in advertising campaigns - belies the fact that this is also Spain's poorest region where an economy rooted in near-feudal landownership (two per cent of the landowners possess fifty per cent of the land area) stifles investment and is the cause of desperate poverty. Rural life is bleak; you soon begin to notice the appalling economic structure of vast absentee-landlord estates, and landless peasants. The andaluz villages saw little economic aid or change during the Franco years, or indeed since, even though the former governing Socialist party has its principal power base here. Tourism in coastal areas has brought some respite to the alarmingly high levels of unemployment, and Spain's growing importance as a member of the European Union promises to speed up progress, but there is still a mighty long way to go.

The sight and sound of flamenco, when the guitar laments and heels stamp the boards, or cante jondo, Andalucía's blues, as it mournfully pierces the smoke-laden gloom of a backstreet café, also tell you there's something unique about the people here. The Muslim influence on speech and vocabulary, a stoical fatalism in the face of adversity, and an obsession with the drama of death are all facets of the modern Andalucian character. Contrastingly, the andaluces also love nothing more than a party and the colour and sheer energy of the region's countless and legendary fiestas - always in traditional flamenco costume worn with pride - make them among the most exciting in the world. The romerías, wild and semi-religious pilgrimages to honour local saints at country shrines are yet another excuse for a jamboree. And in quieter moments there are few greater pleasures than to join the drinkers at a local bar winding down over a glass of traditional fino (dry sherry from Jerez), while ! nibbling tapas - Andalucía's great titbit invention. Few places in the world can boast such a wealth of natural wonders in so compact an area. The mighty Guadalquivir river which crosses and irrigates the region from its source in the Cazorla mountains of Jaén in the northeast, reaches the sea 250 miles away at the dune-fringed beaches and marismas of the Coto Doñana National Park, Europe's largest and most important wildlife sanctuary. To the east and towering above Granada, the peaks of the Sierra Nevada include the Spanish peninsula's highest mountain, snowcapped for most of the year, while twenty miles away and close to the sweltering beaches, sugar cane thrives. This crop was another contribution to Europe by the Moors, along with oranges, almonds, aubergines, saffron and most of the spices now used to flavour the region's cooking which features an astonishing variety of seafood. Nestling in the folds of the same mountains are the valleys of the Alpujarras, a wildly picturesque region dotted with dozens of mountain villages! , many of them little changed since Moorish times. Further east again come the gulch-ridden badlands and lunar landscapes of Almería's deserts, sought out by film-makers and astronomers for the clearest skies in Europe.

On the coast it's easy to despair. Extending to the west of Málaga is the Costa del Sol, Europe's most developed resort area, with its beaches hidden behind a remorseless density of concrete hotels and apartment complexes. But even here the real Andalucía is still to be found if you're prepared to seek it out: go merely a few kilometres inland and you'll encounter the timeless Spain of white villages and wholehearted country fiestas. Travel further, both east and west, along the coast and you'll find some of the best beaches in all Spain, along the Costa de la Luz, near Cádiz, or the Costa de Almería.

Andalucía's sunshine image - projected across the world in advertising campaigns - belies the fact that this is also Spain's poorest region where an economy rooted in near-feudal landownership (two per cent of the landowners possess fifty per cent of the land area) stifles investment and is the cause of desperate poverty. Rural life is bleak; you soon begin to notice the appalling economic structure of vast absentee-landlord estates, and landless peasants. The andaluz villages saw little economic aid or change during the Franco years, or indeed since, even though the former governing Socialist party has its principal power base here. Tourism in coastal areas has brought some respite to the alarmingly high levels of unemployment, and Spain's growing importance as a member of the European Union promises to speed up progress, but there is still a mighty long way to go.

Portugal is an astonishingly beautiful country, the rivers, forests and lush valleys of the north are a splendid and complementary contrast to its contorted southern coastline of beaches, cliffs and coves. If you've come from the arid plains of central Spain, Portugal's dry southern Alentejo region doesn't promise any immediate relief, but - unlike Spain - you don't have to travel very far to witness so total a contrast that it's hard, at first, to take in. Suddenly the landscape is infinitely softer and greener, with flowers and trees everywhere. Life also seems easier-paced and the people more courteous; the Portuguese themselves talk of their nation as a land of brandos costumes - gentle ways. For so small a country, Portugal sports a tremendous cultural diversity. There are highly sophisticated resorts along the coast around Lisbon and on the well- developed Algarve in the south, upon which European tourists have been descending for around thirty years. Lisbon itself, in its idiosyncratic, rather old-fashioned way, has enough diversions to please most city devotees; the massive development projects that accompanied the 1998 Lisbon Expo firmly locking it into modern Europe without quite jettisoning its most endearing, ramshackle qualities. But in the rural areas - the Alentejo, the mountainous Beiras, or northern Trs-os-Montes - this is often still a conspicuously underdeveloped country. Tourism and European Union membership have changed many regions - most notably in the north, where new road building scythes through the countryside - but for anyone wanting to get off the beaten track, there are limitless opportunities to experience smaller towns and rural areas that still seem rooted in the last century.

In terms of population, and of customs, differences between the north and south are particularly striking. Above a roughly sketched line, more or less corresponding with the course of the Rio Tejo (River Tagus), the people are of predominantly Celtic and Germanic stock. It was here, in the north at Guimares, that the "Lusitanian" nation was born, in the wake of the Christian reconquest from the North African Moors. South of the Tagus, where the Roman, and then the Moorish, civilizations were most established, people tend to be darker-skinned (moreno) and maintain perhaps more of a "Mediterranean" lifestyle (though the Portuguese coastline is, in fact, entirely Atlantic). Agriculture reflects this divide as well, with oranges, figs and cork in the south, and more elemental corn and potatoes in the north. Indeed, in the north the methods of farming date back to pre-Christian days, based on a mass of tiny plots divided and subdivided over the generations.

More recent events are also woven into the pattern. The 1974 Revolution, which brought to an end 48 years of dictatorship, came from the south - an area of vast estates, rich landowners and a dependent workforce - while the later conservative backlash came from the north, with its powerful religious authorities and individual smallholders wary of change. But more profoundly even than the Revolution, it is emigration that has altered people's attitudes and the appearance of the countryside. After Lisbon, the largest Portuguese community is in Paris, and there are migrant workers spread throughout France, Germany and North America. Returning, these emigrants have brought in modern ideas and challenged many traditional rural values. New ideas and cultural influences have arrived, too, through Portugal's own immigrants from the old African colonies of Cape Verde, Mozambique and Angola.

The greatest of all Portuguese influences, however, is the sea. The Atlantic seems to dominate the land not only physically, producing the consistently temperate climate, but mentally and historically, too. The Portuguese are very conscious of themselves as a seafaring race; mariners like Vasco da Gama led the way in the discovery of Africa and the New World, and until comparatively recently Portugal remained a colonial power, albeit one in deep crisis. Such links long ago brought African and South American strands into the country's culture: in the distinctive music of fado, blues-like songs heard in Lisbon and Coimbra, for example, or the Moorish-influenced Manueline, or Baroque "Discovery", architecture that provides the country's most distinctive monuments.

This "glorious" history has also led to the peculiar national characteristic of saudade: a slightly resigned, nostalgic air, and a feeling that the past will always overshadow the possibilities of the future. The years of isolation under the dictator Salazar, which yielded to democracy after the 1974 Revolution, reinforced such feelings, as the ruling elite spurned "contamination" by the rest of Europe. Only in the last decade or so, with Portugal's entry into the European Union, have things really begun to change. A belated industrial revolution is finally underway, and the Portuguese are becoming increasingly geared toward Lisbon and the cities. For those who have stayed in the countryside, however, life remains traditional - disarmingly so to outsiders - and social mores seem fixed in the past. Women still wear black if their husbands are absent, as many are, working in France, or Germany, or at sea.

All of which makes travel here an intense and rewarding - if not always easy - experience. Certainly, there can be problems in coming to terms with your privileged position as tourist in a nation that, for the most part, would regard such activities as those of another world. And the northern cities especially have a reputation for hustlers: self-appointed guides whose eagerness to offer their services - and whose attitude to tourists as being a justifiable source of income (and to women as something much worse) - can be hard to deal with. If you find this to be too much of a struggle, then it would probably be better to keep to low-key resorts like Essaouira or Asilah, or to the more cosmopolitan holiday destination of Agadir, built very much in the image of its Spanish counterparts, or even a packaged sightseeing tour.

But you'd miss a lot that way. Morocco is at its best well away from such trappings. A week's hiking in the Atlas; a journey through the southern oases or into the pre-Sahara; or leisured strolls around Tangier, Fes or Marrakesh - once you adapt to a different way of life, all your time will be well spent. And it is difficult for any traveller to go for long without running into Morocco's equally powerful tradition of hospitality, generosity and openness. This is a country people return to again and again.

Regions

Geographically, the country divides into five basic zones: the coast, Mediterranean and Atlantic; the great cities of the plains; the Rif and Atlas mountains; and the oases and desert of the pre- and fully-fledged Sahara. With two or three weeks - even two or three months - you can't expect to cover all of this, though it's easy enough (and highly recommended) to take in something of each aspect.

You are unlikely to miss the mountains, in any case. The three ranges of the Atlas, with the Rif a kind of extension in the north, cut right across the interior - physical and historical barriers, and inhabited for the most part by the indigenous Moroccan Berbers. Contrary to general preconceptions, it is actually the Berbers who make up most of the population; only around ten percent of Moroccans are "pure" Arabs, although with the shift to the industrialized cities, such distinctions are becoming less and less significant.

A more current distinction, perhaps, is the legacy of Morocco's colonial occupation over the fifty-odd years before it reasserted its independence in 1956. The colonized country was divided into Spanish and French zones - the former contained Tetouan and the Rif, the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic coasts, and parts of the Western Sahara; the latter comprised the plains and the main cities (Fes, Marrakesh, Casablanca and Rabat), as well as the Atlas. It was the French, who ruled their "protectorate" more closely, who had the most lasting effect on Moroccan culture, Europeanizing the cities to a strong degree and firmly imposing their language, which is spoken today by all educated Moroccans (after Moroccan Arabic or the three local Berber languages).

This regionalism is an obsession and perhaps the most significant change to the country over recent decades has been the creation of seventeen autonomías - autonomous regions - with their own governments, budgets and cultural ministries. The old days of a unified nation, governed with a firm hand from Madrid, seem to have gone forever, as the separate kingdoms which made up the original Spanish state reassert themselves. And the differences are evident wherever you look: in language, culture and artistic traditions, in landscapes and cityscapes, and attitudes and politics.

The cities - above all - are compellingly individual. Barcelona, for many, has the edge: for Gaudí's splendid modernista architecture, the lively promenade of Las Ramblas, designer clubs par excellence, and, not least, for Barça - the city's football team. But Madrid, although not as pretty, claims as many devotees. The city and its people, immortalized in the movies of Pedro Almodóvar, have a vibrancy and style that is revealed in a thousand bars and summer terrazas. Not to mention three of the world's finest art museums. Then there's Sevilla, home of flamenco and all the clichés of southern Spain; Valencia, the vibrant Levantine city with an arts scene and nightlife to equal any European rival; and Bilbao, a new entry on Spain's cultural circuit, due to Frank Gehry's astonishing Guggenheim museum.

Monuments range just as widely from one region to another, dependent on their history of control and occupation by Romans and Moors, their role in the "golden age" of Imperial Renaissance Spain, or their twentieth-century fortunes. Touring Castile and León, you confront the classic Spanish images of vast cathedrals and reconquista castles - literally hundreds of the latter; in the northern mountains of Asturias and the Pyrenees, tiny, almost organic Romanesque churches dot the hillsides and villages; Andalucía has the great mosques and Moorish palaces of Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba; Castile has the superbly preserved medieval capital, Toledo, and the gorgeous Renaissance university city of Salamanca; while the harsh landscape of Estremadura cradles the ornate conquistador towns built with riches from the "New World".

Not that Spain is predominantly about buildings. For most visitors, the landscape holds just as much fascination - and variety. The evergreen estuaries of Galicia could hardly be more different from the high, arid plains of Castile, or the gulch-like desert landscapes of Almería. Agriculture makes its mark in the patterned hillsides of the wine- and olive-growing regions and the rice fields of the Levante. Spain is also one of the most mountainous countries in Europe, and there is superb walking and wildlife in a dozen or more sierras - above all in the Picos de Europa and Pyrenees. Spain's unique fauna boast protected species like brown bears, the Spanish lynx and Mediterranean monk seals as well as more common wild boar, white storks and birds of prey.

One of Spain's greatest draws is undeniably its beaches although with infinitely more variety than you would be led to believe from the sun-and-sand holiday brochures. Long tracts of coastline - along the Costa del Sol, in particular - have been developed into concrete hotel and villa complexes but delightful pockets remain even on the big tourist costas. On the Costa Brava, the string of coves between Palamos and Begur are often overlooked, while in the south there are superb windsurfing waters around Tarifa and some decidedly low-key resorts along the Costa de la Luz. In the north, the cooler Atlantic coastline boasts the surfing sands of Cantabria and the unspoilt coves of Galicia's estuaries. Offshore, the Balearic islands have some superb sands and, if you're up for it, Ibiza also offers one of the most hedonistic backdrops to beachlife in the Mediterranean.

Wherever you are in Spain, you can't help but notice the Spaniards' infectious enthusiasm for life. In the cities there is always something happening - in bars and clubs, on the streets, and especially at fiesta times. Even in out of the way places there's a surprising range of nightlife and entertainment, not to mention the daily pleasures of a round of tapas, moving from bar to bar, having a beer, a glass of wine or a fino (dry sherry) and a bite of the house speciality.

The identity and appeal of each of the regions is explored in the chapter introductions, where you'll find a rundown on their highlights, while in the following pages you'll find a selection of the very best of Spain.

For so small a country, Portugal sports a tremendous cultural diversity. There are highly sophisticated resorts along the coast around Lisbon and on the well-developed Algarve in the south, upon which European tourists have been descending for over forty years. Lisbon itself, in its idiosyncratic, rather old-fashioned way, has enough diversions to please most city devotees; the massive development projects that accompanied the 1998 Lisbon Expo firmly locked it into modern Europe without quite jettisoning its most endearing, ramshackle qualities. But in the rural areas - the Alentejo, the mountainous Beiras, or northern Trás-os-Montes - this is often still a conspicuously underdeveloped country. Tourism and European Union membership have changed many regions - most notably in the north, where new road building scythes through the countryside - but for anyone wanting to get off the beaten track, there are limitless opportunities to experience smaller towns and rural areas that still seem rooted in the last century.

In terms of population and customs, differences between the north and south are particularly striking. Above a roughly sketched line, more or less corresponding with the course of the Rio Tejo (River Tagus), the people are of predominantly Celtic and Germanic stock. It was here, in the north at Guimarães, that the Lusitanian nation was born, in the wake of the Christian reconquest from the North African Moors. South of the Tagus, where the Roman, and then the Moorish, civilizations were most established, people tend to be darker-skinned (moreno) and maintain more of a Mediterranean lifestyle (though the Portuguese coastline is, in fact, entirely Atlantic). Agriculture reflects this divide as well, with oranges, figs and cork in the south, and more elemental corn and potatoes in the north. Indeed, in places in the north the methods of farming date back to pre-Christian days, based on a mass of tiny plots divided and subdivided over the generations.

More recent events are also woven into the pattern. The 1974 Revolution, which brought to an end 48 years of dictatorship, came from the south - an area of vast estates, rich landowners and a dependent workforce - while the later conservative backlash came from the north, with its powerful religious authorities and individual smallholders wary of change. But more profoundly even than the Revolution, it is emigration that has altered people's attitudes and the appearance of the countryside. After Lisbon, the largest Portuguese community is in Paris, and there are migrant workers spread throughout France, Germany and North America. Returning, these emigrants have brought in modern ideas and challenged many traditional rural values. New ideas and cultural influences have arrived, too, through Portugal's own immigrants from the old African colonies of Cape Verde, Mozambique and Angola, while the country's close ties with Brazil are also conspicuously obvious.

The greatest of all Portuguese influences, however, is the sea. The Atlantic dominates the land not only physically, producing the consistently temperate climate, but mentally and historically, too. The Portuguese are very conscious of themselves as a seafaring race; mariners like Vasco da Gama led the way in the discovery of Africa and the New World, and until comparatively recently Portugal remained a colonial power, albeit one in deep crisis. Such links long ago brought African and South American strands into the country's culture: in the distinctive music of fado, blues-like songs heard in Lisbon and Coimbra, for example, or the Moorish-influenced Manueline or Baroque Discovery, the style of architecture that provides the country's most distinctive monuments.

This "glorious" history has also led to the peculiar national characteristic of saudade: a slightly resigned, nostalgic air, and a feeling that the past will always overshadow the possibilities of the future. The years of isolation under the dictator Salazar, which yielded to democracy after the 1974 Revolution, reinforced such feelings, as the ruling elite spurned influences from the rest of Europe. Only in the last two decades or so, with Portugal's entry into the European Union, have things really begun to change and the Portuguese are becoming increasingly geared toward Lisbon and the cities. For those who have stayed in the countryside, however, life remains traditional - disarmingly so to outsiders - and social mores seem fixed in the past. Women still wear black if their husbands are absent, as many are, working in France, or Germany, or at sea.

Closer to hand, island beaches come in all shapes, sizes and consistencies, from discrete crescents framed by tree-fringed cliffs straight out of a Japanese screen painting, to deserted, mile-long gifts deposited by small streams, where you could imagine enacting Crusoe scenarios among the dunes. But inland there is always civilization, whether the tiny cubist villages of the remoter outposts, or burgeoning resorts as cosmopolitan - and brazen - as any in the Mediterranean.

What amazes most first-time visitors is how, despite the strenuous efforts of developers and arsonists, this environment has not yet been utterly destroyed. If you're used to the murky waters of the open Mediterranean as sampled in Spain, Israel or southern France, then the Aegean will come as a revelation, with thirty-to-forty-foot visibility the norm. This relative lack of pollution is proclaimed at certain beachfronts by tourist-board signs bestowing "Golden Starfish" or EU-ratified "Blue Flag" awards on the place: patently self- congratulatory, but with basis in fact at many coves, where live starfish or octopi curl up to avoid you, and dover sole, cuttlefish or rays skitter off across the bottom. The sea is also a water-sports paradise: the joys of snorkelling and kayaking are on offer to the untrained, and some of the best windsurfing areas in the world beckon. Yacht charter, whether bare-boat or skippered, is big business, particularly out of Rhodes, Klymnos, Lefkdha, P--ros and Piraeus; indeed,the Greek islands are rated on a par with the Caribbean for quality sailing itineraries. And during the months when the sea is too cold or the weather too blustery, many islands - not necessarily the largest ones - offer superb hiking on surviving mule-trails between hill villages, or up the highest summits.

Although more protected than the Greek mainland from invasions, the various island groups have been subjected to a staggering variety of foreign influences. Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, crusading Knights of Saint John, Genoese, Venetians, French, English, Italians and Ottomans have all controlled various islands since the time of Alexander the Great. The high tide of empire has left behind countless monuments: frescoed Byzantine churches and monasteries, the fortified Venetian towns of the Cyclades and the Ionians, the more conventional castles of the Genoese and Knights in the northeast Aegean and Dodecanese, Ottoman bridges and mosques, and the Art Deco or mock-Renaissance edifices of the Italian Fascist administration.

Constructions from many of these eras are often juxtaposed with - or even superimposed on - the cities and temples of ancient Greece, which provide the foundation in all senses for claims of an enduring Hellenic cultural identity down the centuries; museums, particularly on Crete, Smos, Rhodes and L'mnos, amply document the archeological evidence. But it was medieval Greek peasants, fisherman and shepherds, working without a local ruling class or formal Renaissance to impose models of taste or patronize the arts, who most tangibly and recently contributed to our idea of Greekness with their songs and dances, costumes, weaving and vernacular architecture, some unconsciously drawing on ancient antecedents. Much of this has vanished in recent decades, replaced by an avalanche of bouzouki cassettes, "genuine museum copies" and bawdy postcards in tacky souvenir shops, but enough remains in isolated pockets for visitors to marvel at its combination of form and function.

Of course, most Greek-island visits are devoted to more hedonistic pursuits: always going lightly dressed, swimming in balmy waters at dusk, talking and drinking under the stars until 3am. Such pleasures more than compensate for certain enduring weaknesses in the Greek tourism "product": don't arrive expecting orthopedic mattresses, state-of-the-art plumbing, Cordon-Bleu cuisine or obsequious service. Except at a slowly growing number of upmarket facilities in new or restored buildings, hotel and pension rooms can be box-like, campsites tend to be of the rough-and-ready sort, and the food at its best is fresh and simply presented.

Not that Spain is just about monuments. For most visitors, the landscape holds just as much fascination - and variety. The evergreen rias or estuaries of Galicia could hardly be more different from the high, arid plains of Castile, or the gulch-like desert landscapes of Almeria. Spain is also one of the most mountainous countries in Europe, and there is superb walking and wildlife in a dozen or more sierras - and above all in the Picos de Europa and Pyrenees.

Then, of course, there are the Spaniards and their infectious enthusiasm for life. In the cities there is always something happening - in bars and clubs, on the streets - while the music and arts scenes are more vibrant than they have been for many years, with a resurgent "new flamenco", a film industry brought to international attention by the anarchic Pedro Almodovar, and a superb array of modern galleries, including Bilbao's spectacular Guggenheim, and a trio devoted to the century's greatest Spanish artists, Picasso, Miro and Dali. Even in out of the way places there's a surprising range of nightlife and entertainment, not to mention the daily pleasures of a round of tapas, moving from bar to bar, having a beer, a glass of wine or a fino (dry sherry) and a bite of the house speciality.

Another, almost limitless source of diversion are the traditional fiestas. They include established events like the great April feria in Sevilla, the pyrotechnic extravaganzas of Las Fallas in Valencia, and the running of the bulls in Pamplona, as well as thousands of local events, celebrating a town or village saint's day. As often as not, you'll happen on these quite unawares, to be carried away on a tide of exuberant street partying, concerts, and any number of bizarre activities, from parades of devils to full-blown tomato-throwing battles.

All of which makes Morocco an intense and rewarding experience, and a country that is ideally suited to independent (or, for activities, small-group) travel. If you have time enough, you can cover a whole range of experiences – hike in the Atlas, drive through the southern oases, relax at the laid-back Atlantic resorts like Asilah or Essarouia, and lose yourself wandering the old streets of Fes or Marrakesh. It can be hard at times to come to terms with the privilege of your position as a tourist in a country with severe poverty, and there is, too, occasional hassle from unofficial guides. But Morocco is essentially a safe and politically stable country to visit: the death in 1999 of King Hassan II, the Arab world’s longest-serving leader, was followed by an easy transition to his son, Mohammed VI. And your enduring impressions are likely to be overwhelmingly positive, shaped by encounters with Morocco’s powerful tradition of hospitality, generosity and openness. This is a country people return to again and again.

Where to go

Geographically, the country divides into four basic zones: the coast, Mediterranean and Atlantic; the great cities of the plains; the Rif and Atlas mountains; and the oases and desert of the pre- and fully fledged Sahara. With two or three weeks – even two or three months – you can’t expect to cover all of this, though it’s easy enough (and highly recommended) to take in something of each aspect.

You are unlikely to miss the mountains, in any case. The three ranges of the Atlas, with the Rif a kind of extension in the north, cut right across the interior – physical and historical barriers, and inhabited for the most part by the indigenous Moroccan Berbers. Contrary to general preconceptions, it is actually the Berbers who make up most of the population (only around ten percent of Moroccans are "pure" Arabs) although with the shift to the industrialized cities, such distinctions are becoming less and less significant. A more current distinction, perhaps, is the legacy of Morocco’s colonial occupation over the fifty-odd years before it reasserted its independence in 1956. The colonized country was divided into Spanish and French zones – the former contained Tetouan and the Rif, the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic coasts, and parts of the Western Sahara; the latter comprised the plains and the main cities (Fes, Marrakesh, Casablanca and Rabat), as well as the Atlas. It was the French, who ruled their "protectorate" more closely, who had the most lasting effect on Moroccan culture, Europeanizing the cities to a strong degree and firmly imposing their language, which is spoken today by all educated Moroccans (after Moroccan Arabic or one of the three local Berber languages).

Broadly speaking, the coast is best enjoyed in the north at Tangier, beautiful and still shaped by its old "international" port status, Asilah and Larache, and in the south at El Jadida, at Essaouira, perhaps the most easy-going resort, or at remote Sidi Ifni. Agadir, the main package tour resort, is less worthwhile – but a functional enough base for exploration.

Inland, where the real interest of Morocco lies, the outstanding cities are Fes and Marrakesh. The great imperial capitals of the country’s various dynasties, they are almost unique in the Arab world for the chance they offer to witness some city life which, in patterns and appearance, remains in large part medieval. For monuments, Fes is the highlight, though Marrakesh, the "beginning of the south", is for most visitors the more enjoyable and exciting.

Travel in the south – roughly beyond a line drawn between Casablanca and Meknes – is, on the whole, easier and more relaxing than in the sometimes frenetic north. This is certainly true of the mountain ranges, where the Rif can feel disturbingly anarchic, while the southerly Atlas ranges (Middle, High and Anti) are beautiful and accessible. Hiking in the High Atlas, especially around North Africa’s highest peak, Djebel Toubkal, is in fact something of a growth industry. Even if you are no more than a casual walker, it’s worth considering, with summer treks possible at all levels of experience and altitude. And, despite inroads made by commercialization, it remains essentially "undiscovered" – like the Alps must have been in the nineteenth century. Equally exploratory in mood are the great southern routes beyond – and across – the Atlas, amid the oases of the pre-Sahara. Major routes here can be travelled by bus, minor ones by rented car or local taxi, the really remote ones by four-wheel-drive vehicles or by getting lifts on local camions (lorries), sharing space with the market produce and livestock.

The oases, around Tinerhir, Zagora and Erfoud, or (for the committed) Tata or Figuig, are classic images of the Arab world, vast palmeries stretching into desert horizons. Equally memorable is the architecture that they share with the Atlas – bizarre and fabulous pisé (mud) kasbahs and ksour, with Gothic-looking turrets and multi-patterned walls.

Further south, you can follow a route through the Western Sahara all the way down to Dakhla, just 20km short of the Tropic of Cancer, where the weather is scorching even in midwinter.

Closer to hand, island beaches come in all shapes, sizes and consistencies, from discrete crescents framed by tree-fringed cliffs straight out of a Japanese screen painting, to deserted, mile-long gifts deposited by small streams, where you could imagine enacting Crusoe scenarios among the dunes. But inland there is always civilization, whether the tiny cubist villages of the remoter outposts or burgeoning resorts as cosmopolitan - and brazen - as any in the Mediterranean.

What amazes most first-time visitors is the islands' relative lack of pollution. If you're used to the murky waters of the open Mediterranean as sampled in Spain, Israel or southern France, the Aegean will come as a revelation, with forty-foot visibility the norm, and all manner of sea creatures visible, from starfish and octopuses on the bottom to vast schools of fish.

The sea is also a watersports paradise: the joys of snorkelling and kayaking are on offer to novices, and some of the best windsurfing areas in the world beckon. Yacht charter, whether bare-boat or skippered, is big business, particularly out of Rhodes, Kálymnos, Lefkádha, Póros and Pireás; indeed, the Greek islands are rated on a par with the Caribbean for quality sailing itineraries. And during the months when the sea is too cold or the weather too blustery, many islands - not necessarily the largest ones - offer superb hiking on surviving mule-trails between hill villages, or up the highest summits.

Although more protected than the Greek mainland from invasions, the various archipelagos have been subject to a staggering variety of foreign influences. Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, crusading Knights of Saint John, Genoese, Venetians, French, English, Italians and Ottomans have all controlled different islands since the time of Alexander the Great. The high tide of empire has left behind countless monuments: frescoed Byzantine churches and monasteries, the fortified Venetian towns of the Cyclades and the Ionians, the more conventional castles of the Genoese and Knights in the northeast Aegean and Dodecanese, Ottoman bridges and mosques, and the Art Deco or mock-Renaissance edifices of the Italian Fascist administration.

Constructions from many of these eras are often juxtaposed with - or even superimposed on - the cities and temples of ancient Greece, which provide the foundation in all senses for claims of an enduring Hellenic cultural identity down the centuries; museums, particularly on Crete, Rhodes, Sámos, Híos, Lésvos and Límnos, amply document the archeological evidence. But it was medieval Greek peasants, fishermen and shepherds, working without an indigenous ruling class or formal Renaissance to impose models of taste or patronize the arts, who most tangibly contributed to our idea of Greekness with their songs and dances, costumes, weaving and vernacular architecture. Much of this has vanished in recent decades, replaced by an avalanche of bouzoúki-instrumental cassettes, "genuine museum copies" and tacky souvenir shops, but enough remains in isolated pockets for visitors to marvel at Greek popular culture's combination of form and function.

Of course, most Greek-island visits are devoted to more hedonistic pursuits: going lightly dressed, swimming in balmy waters at dusk, talking and drinking under the stars until 3am. Such pleasures amply compensate for certain enduring weaknesses in the Greek tourism "product": don't go expecting orthopedic mattresses, state-of-the-art plumbing, Cordon-Bleu cuisine or attentive service. Except at a limited number of upmarket facilities in new or restored buildings, hotel and pension rooms can be box-like, campsites tend to be of the rough-and-ready sort, and the food at its best is fresh and simply presented.

All of which makes travel here an intense and rewarding - if not always easy - experience. Certainly, there can be problems in coming to terms with your privileged position as tourist in a nation that, for the most part, would regard such activities as those of another world. And the northern cities especially have a reputation for hustlers: self-appointed guides whose eagerness to offer their services - and whose attitude to tourists as being a justifiable source of income (and to women as something much worse) - can be hard to deal with. If you find this to be too much of a struggle, then it would probably be better to keep to low-key resorts like Essaouira or Asilah, or to the more cosmopolitan holiday destination of Agadir, built very much in the image of its Spanish counterparts, or even a packaged sightseeing tour.

But you'd miss a lot that way. Morocco is at its best well away from such trappings. A week's hiking in the Atlas; a journey through the southern oases or into the pre-Sahara; or leisured strolls around Tangier, Fes or Marrakesh - once you adapt to a different way of life, all your time will be well spent. And it is difficult for any traveller to go for long without running into Morocco's equally powerful tradition of hospitality, generosity and openness. This is a country people return to again and again.

Regions

Geographically, the country divides into five basic zones: the coast, Mediterranean and Atlantic; the great cities of the plains; the Rif and Atlas mountains; and the oases and desert of the pre- and fully-fledged Sahara. With two or three weeks - even two or three months - you can't expect to cover all of this, though it's easy enough (and highly recommended) to take in something of each aspect.

You are unlikely to miss the mountains, in any case. The three ranges of the Atlas, with the Rif a kind of extension in the north, cut right across the interior - physical and historical barriers, and inhabited for the most part by the indigenous Moroccan Berbers. Contrary to general preconceptions, it is actually the Berbers who make up most of the population; only around ten percent of Moroccans are "pure" Arabs, although with the shift to the industrialized cities, such distinctions are becoming less and less significant.

A more current distinction, perhaps, is the legacy of Morocco's colonial occupation over the fifty-odd years before it reasserted its independence in 1956. The colonized country was divided into Spanish and French zones - the former contained Tetouan and the Rif, the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic coasts, and parts of the Western Sahara; the latter comprised the plains and the main cities (Fes, Marrakesh, Casablanca and Rabat), as well as the Atlas. It was the French, who ruled their "protectorate" more closely, who had the most lasting effect on Moroccan culture, Europeanizing the cities to a strong degree and firmly imposing their language, which is spoken today by all educated Moroccans (after Moroccan Arabic or the three local Berber languages).

The Rough Guide to Portugal is like having a local friend plan your trip!

The city's emergence from provincialism is, however, only part of the picture. With the increase in population, Dublin is bulging at the seams, which, of course, brings its problems - spend just a couple of days here and you'll come upon inner-city deprivation as bad as any in Europe. The spirit of Dublin has its contradictions, too, with youthful enterprise set against a deeply embedded traditionalism: the national divorce referendum in 1995 may have gone in favour of reform, but it was a close-run thing. However, the collision of the old order and the forward-looking younger generations is as an essential part of the appeal of this extrovert and dynamic city, and, despite the differences, the wit and garrulous sociability for which its inhabitants are famous is a constant feature. In the legendary - and plentiful - bars, the buskers of Grafton Street and the tour guides who ply the streets with visitors in tow, there's an unmistakable love of banter. Dublin's considerable literary heritage owes much to this trait, and, on either side of the Liffey you'll find reminders of literary personalities who are as intrinsic to the city's character as the river itself - from the bronze plaques in the pavement following the route of Leopold Bloom, hero of James Joyce's Ulysses, to the remarkable statue of Oscar Wilde on Merrion Square.

Ireland's tremendous economic growth - an average of nine percent per year between 1994 and 1998 - has given new impetus to just about every facet of the capital's cultural life. Historic treasures are being promoted and displayed in a way previously not possible, from the Millennium Wing of the National Gallery to the new displays of decorative arts at the Collins Barracks, and major periods of social and political history are articulated with flair, both in the plethora of theme-based tours available and the built environment of the city itself. Everywhere in Dublin you'll find evidence of a rich past well worth exploring: exceptional Viking finds excavated at Wood Quay (and now on show in the National Museum); impressive reminders of Anglo-Norman and British imperial power; elegant Georgian streets and squares; and monuments to the violent struggle for independence. The visual arts are enjoying a higher public profile too, with mouthwatering exhibitions in the city's numerous galleries supplemented by the development of a unique design scene, characterized by subtlety and experimentation. Throughout the city there's a palpable sense that Dublin's cultural heritage is coming into its own with striking confidence.

Dublin is, of course, known for its pubs, and, for many, sampling the myriad bars and buzzing nightlife is an integral part of any visit to the city. There's also plenty of music on offer and, while the capital has nothing to match the music cultures of rural Ireland, there's no shortage of traditional, rock and jazz venues. Theatre too has long played a part in the city's cultural life and you can catch plays by O'Casey, Synge and Shaw all year round at the Abbey Theatre, as well as experiencing the vitality of Dublin's continuing dramatic tradition during the Theatre and Fringe Festivals.

For those who want to get out into the surrounding countryside, again there are plenty of options. Dublin is within easy reach of the wild open heights of the Wicklow Mountains, the secluded monastic settlement of Glendalough, a sprinkling of choice stately homes, and some of Europe's most important prehistoric sites, including Knowth and Newgrange.

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