The Journey to Marrakesh

This is part one of what will hopefully become a four part series chronicling my trip to Morocco and my stories from along the way.

This does get quite long, but a lot happens!

Admittedly, I woke up feeling a bit under the weather, but I quickly forgot about this after realising that the milk subscription I’d signed up to earlier in the week had made their first delivery! Gold top milk, to my door, what a life. I had some eggs for breakfast, built my wooden milk coop, got my bag and headed out to the big old world.

On the Victoria line, I saw someone from work with his girlfriend, who also seemed to be going on holiday. We all got off at Victoria and we were all heading to Gatwick which was nice.

Once we got up the escalators though, around 1140, the trains were all cancelled as there’d been two separate incidents! I thought I might be able to get a train from Clapham Junction so we parted ways and I headed down to Clapham.

Once I got there, I quickly realised that I was wrong, and so headed all the way down to East Croydon. There, I tried to wait it out, but check in was meant to close at 1400, with the flight leaving at 1430, so it was getting a bit tight. I could see the flight had been delayed though, which gave me some hope.

Eventually I got a cab just after 1315. I shared with a couple from Croydon (the man reminded me a bit of Del Boy) and an Italian couple who had just been in town to visit their daughter. They were a funny bunch and we all had our different sweets which I thought was quite funny. Boiled ones for the Croydon couple, chewy fruit ones for the Italian couple and my Polos.

When I got to the airport at 1400, I rushed up to security, but the gate told me I was too late. A kind security fellow told me to go down and see EasyJet and they’d get me through. I knew the plane had been delayed from 1430 to 1505, so when I went down there they let me into security. That was all fairly straightforward, and I went straight through to the gate, picking up a water bottle, the FT and NYT on the way.

When I got on the plane, I had the entire row to myself, so I shuffled over and took the window seat. I think that’s the first time I’ve had a window seat and it was very fun (picture below!). I read for a bit, and then put a podcast on and drifted away for a few hours whilst we were up there. Eventually, I woke up, went to the loo and spoke to both of the pilots!! They were stretching their legs (one at a time) after having had their lunch, and we had a good chat whilst I waited for the loo - they did go first though, which I guess is fair enough.

When I landed, I realised that I didn’t have any signal and that Morocco (on reflection, quite obviously) doesn’t have O2 roaming. It’s £26 for 250mb of data out here and I refuse to pay that so I’ve got a few days without any connection ahead! That’ll be fine, I’m sure.

I then walked across from the airport into the city. It’s a long old walk (about 90 minutes) but the road was fairly well lit. I could’ve got a cab, but I thought it would be a nice walk and introduction to the city, which it was! This is all mildly complicated by the fact that I hurt my foot skipping last week, and so walking does get a bit painful, but I walked from Finchley Road to my flat on Sunday in preparation and have learnt how to walk without my foot hurting too much - in theory.

Crossing the road here is a bit like walking into the matrix, there’s not really any rules, but I’ve not had any issues so far. My feet and lower legs were hurting a fair bit by the end of this and I really needed the loo but I’d said I’d meet the Airbnb host outside this college in the north of the city at 2100 and without any signal, couldn’t really afford to not make this. And so, made it I did! I waited outside for about 5 minutes before I saw him and he showed me to the Riad. There’s a lot of curvy roads here but I think I’ve found my way.

I rang home, and then meandered out to a) get some cash and b) get some food. The former was quite easy - there was a free cash machine at the main square I managed to get to, which meant I could withdraw my money at the Mastercard rate without any charges. Big win.

The latter took a bit more effort and I eventually got some mixed meat, veg and cheese in a pita kind of bread, which was nice but nothing to write home about. I got a Nutella crepe afterwards, which was quite good though.

I then came home, and it was 2345 by the time I got in. I read my book for a bit, stretched out the sore muscles and brushed my teeth. You can’t drink the tap water here, so I had to clean my tooth brush with my limited bottled water, which is fairly novel.