Apartment Hunting

We spent a week in three hotels, seeing several of the neighborhoods of Rabat.  Our favorite hotel was the Hotel Atlantic Agdal, which wound up being almost just around the corner from the apartment we rented.

We used an agency, which allowed us to see a number of apartments quickly (they drove us around in a car).  We saw a variety of Moroccan decorations, and the ins and outs of washing machines (no dryers), gas canisters somewhere in the apartment, and city amenities (we wound up walking distance from the tramway).

Views from the half dozen apartments we looked at.

Having picked an apartment, we needed to get cash for three month's rent.  That was in the 10,000's of dirham  (even the economists in the family agree we can think of the exchange rate as 10:1), and largest bills are 200's ($20) and the largest withdrawals are 2000 dirham at a time (local limit, not from your US bank), and you can maybe get two in one day on the same card from a single ATM.  Then you have to count out the bills (it seems there are hundreds).  It reminded me of paying Korean mechanics in the 1970's, although then I had to be armed and have an armed escort.

Part of the three months rent.

After counting and recounting the rent with the landlord's agent and our rental agent, then it was down the local administrative office to get the lease notarized.  There was one colored stamp, two seals, and several initials, after which we got the keys and returned to the apartment to do laundry, since the orientation and apartment search had exhausted our clean clothes.

The official part of the lease.