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The north of Morocco is the part most itineraries skip on the way to the desert, and it is the part that looks least like the postcard. Five days covers it properly: the capital, the Rif mountains, the blue town of Chefchaouen, the strait at Tangier and the medina of Fes, ending back on the Atlantic coast.

One week is the shortest honest version of the whole country. It starts on the Atlantic, crosses the north to Fes, drops south through the Middle Atlas cedar forests and the Ziz valley to the dunes at Merzouga, and comes back over the High Atlas into Marrakech.

Half a day is enough to read Casablanca properly, provided somebody is reading it with you. This private tour starts at the Hassan II Mosque, the only mosque in Morocco that non-Muslim visitors may enter, and works back through the city that grew around it: the Art Deco boulevards of the French protectorate, the market halls, and the Habous quarter built in the 1920s as a medina from scratch.

The full day is the half-day tour without the rushing. The same landmarks are there, but so are the places that need time: the old medina behind the port, the Jewish quarter and its museum, Rick's Cafe on the corner of the harbour wall, and a long enough stop at lunch to sit down rather than grab something.

Casablanca is usually seen through a windscreen. This one is done on foot, through the two quarters that reward walking: the old medina behind the port, which predates the French city by centuries, and the Habous quarter, which was designed in the 1920s to look older than it is.

A shore excursion lives or dies on the clock. This one is built backwards from your all-aboard time: the ship's schedule sets the route, not the other way round, and you are collected at the cruise terminal in Casablanca rather than at a meeting point you have to find.

Mohammed V Airport is thirty-five minutes from the Hassan II Mosque, which makes a long connection in Casablanca worth leaving the terminal for. You are collected at arrivals, shown the city, and returned with time to check in again.

Rabat is an hour up the coast from Casablanca and it is the easiest full day out of the city. It is also the quietest of the imperial capitals: a walled medina that people still live in, a kasbah of white and blue lanes above the river mouth, and a Roman and Merinid necropolis half swallowed by its own garden.

South of Casablanca the coast turns Portuguese. Azemmour is a white town of painted walls above the Oum Er-Rbia river; El Jadida, an hour further on, was Mazagan, a fortified Portuguese port held until 1769 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Two and a half hours of motorway separate Casablanca from Marrakech, which makes the red city a long but entirely workable day. You leave early, spend the middle of the day inside the medina, and come back in the evening.