Flying to Maroc part 2

I posted that one a little early to see if I could test it out.. It was certainly not meant to enthrall!

I figured that this year, I was going to try to incorporate pictures into my breathless telling of our adventures. These pictures are going to be especially important this year because I have been sleeping quite a bit to recover from the jetlag and stay out of the heat! Please feel free to click on any of the pictures to get a bigger version.....

So here we are ready to go from minneapolis on saturday at about 7pm.


The flight to london was a lot shorter than I remembered and I had barely fallen asleep after watching Blades of Glory and playing bejewelled when the lights all came on and we were in merry olde england.

One amazing part of this tale was the fact that there was no one sitting next to me on the flight and Jenny was able to move next to me. This was perfect because it would have been very difficult for her to kick me while I attempted to sleep if she was a row ahead of me!

A not so amazing part was he size of the bag of combos that the guy ahead of me had. It was the size of a one gallon plastic bag and he might as well have been practicing the cymbals for how much noise it made.

(Still not as bad as last time when the couple ahead of us took pictures of each other for 5hrs in the dark plane, each flash piercing my eyelids. I have often wondered what those pictures looked like and WHO would look at those)

So we arrived at London in the morning and since we were taking a totoally different airline to Morroco we had to check out and recheck our bags... Finding anything in the London terminals was a chore! I have never been in a place that was so busy.

We found the atlas blue check in and after we checked in and went through the xray machines ( we got in trouble because anyhthing you were holding had to go on the machine but I tried to put something from my pocket in the machine and that earned me a good british scolding)

After we checked through we bought our host Rachid a few wedding presents and ate at a place where I ordered the British breakfast. According to this breakfast, all british people will have a heart attack in the next five years. It was 4 kinds of meat and eggs and the only difference between it and the American was the fact that Americans love to eat pancakes apparently. I was almost compelled to get it out of national pride.

The flight to Marrakech was very much like a four hour nap to me but Jenny reports it was very nice. We landed and got off the plane, went through custo,s so the king would know where we are at all times and met our host Rachid.

Rachid is an old friend from our other trips and it just so happens that he is getting married in a couple of days! We are kind of guests of honor at the wedding and we are staying at the center of all the madness at his apartment. The apartment is actually his Father in laws lower level.

The place is abuzz with excitement and as all good grooms, Rachid is oblivious to it all. (He was planning to work on his wedding day)

The father in law was very excited to talk to us and show us his house and his son, TaHa.(In orange tshirt)

The center of the house is a room full of couches where I have been sleeping a lot and Rita (Rachids Fiancee) s father spends a lot of time telling us in broken english that

learning Arabic is SO EASY! All we need to do is learn 30 words a day.





Finally, I will include a picture of the average meal here. The first is a picture of what I was served by myself and the second is a meal for four. Fending off offers of food is a full time job here. The meals mostly have been whole fish fried up and eaten by hand and a type of saffron chicken served with flatbread. This is always complemented by some tea and more bread. If Morrocans went on the atkins diet, they would starve to death!



We spend most of the day avoiding the heat but at night and morning we go around the city by taxi running wedding errands and paying bills. Jenny has also started observing at her hospital where she was told that everyone speaks english! Guess what? They dont!




More to come. We have already slept outside once and I have showered with a bucket twice!