Our Bright and Eclectic Rabat Apartment

Sadly, our time in relaxing and pretty Rabat is winding down. We depart in early July for our next post, Algiers. We were only in our spacious, suburban apartment for less than 10 months, but that short amount of time didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of setting up a space that feels cheery and packed with personality. I’ve long loved Moroccan-style home decor – the colors, soft textures, and boho vibe – and living here gave me a great opportunity to buy lots of beautiful things like vintage rugs and baskets. If our digs looked a little Moroccan-tinged before, they are at least Moroccan-infused now. The apartment itself doesn’t scream “Morocco.” There’s no keyhole doorways, no hand-painted tile, no fountains in the center of rooms. But yeah, plenty of rugs and accessories to give it the local vibe.

We’ve really enjoyed our Rabat apartment. At first, we were bummed (like we always are!) when we were assigned an apartment in the shi-shi suburban-feeling neighborhood of Hay Riad, south of the city center. We’d have preferred to be in a more bustling neighborhood closer to downtown and to Adam’s language school. But there are worse things than living in a leafy ‘burb that is positively dripping with colorful flowers, teeming with birds, and dotted with understated mansions, which people here call villas. And I won’t lie, I enjoy the neighborhood Starbucks more that I probably should.

The apartment itself has some nice features, like very high ceilings and an open living-room/dining room combo, which is just the best for entertaining. It has three bedrooms, but we were forced to sacrifice one of the bedrooms as a storage room for all the bulky standard-issue government furniture our embassy refused to remove from our apartment. We keep that door shut except for when Adam shows it to guests because he thinks it’s funny, the towers of scratchy couches and glistening dark wood tabes and hutch. We haven’t really missed having a third room. The other two bedrooms are a decent size, have a lot of light, and have nice built-in closets, which is not always a thing in these parts of the world. The kitchen is very large and very ugly but it’s been totally functional and perfectly fine. A girl can dream of a big American modern kitchen, but if her lifestyle is moving to a foreign country every few years, it’s mostly going to remain just a dream.

Anyways, here’s a little peak at our apartment. Hope you enjoy looking at other people’s homes and much as I do. If you’d like to see our previous apartments, check them out here:

Our Sleek and Modern Jerusalem Apartment

Jerusalem Apartment Tour

Before and After: Modern Gray Bedroom

Bold Blue Dining Room: Before and After

Sunny Chartreuse Living Room