Time to Move On and On and On to Morocco

December 17, 2018

Up at 3:30 a.m. and out the door 10 minutes later.  The kids have been great about all of these early mornings and longs days of travel.  It will be about a 20  hour travel day.  Took off just as the sun rising.  It is a quick flight to Qatar, 80 minutes.  Flying over it is a complete desert again.  Didn't really even see any palm trees.  Again, a beautiful airport, very modern and clean.  Suddenly out of nowhere about 12 men in white robs, drums and swords appear singing.  So much fun that you never know what is going to happen next and it is always something different than we have ever seen.

Two hour layover and off to Casablanca - 9 hour flight. The flights aren't actually too bad.  It is really nice to just sit for a change and take a breath.  The riad arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport.  3 hour drive to Riad El Youssoufi in Marrakech. It is surprising to us how green it is here.  There are a lot of fields that are irregated for farming. We had the most spectacular sunset as we drove.  It was our first Moroccan sunset and it did not disappoint.  The sky looked like it was on fire.  A magical sunset for an exotic place. 

We enter the walls of the old city we are officially in the medina.  Back to it being a little chaotic with horses and buggies, cars, motorcycles and pedestrians all going in different directions with no real rules.  We park and are told to wait for our a representative to guide us in.  A minute later we are out of the van with our stuff following someone down the back roads where our van is not allowed to drive.  It doesn't stop motorcycle and bikes though.  After about a 7 minute walk we make it to the final, narrow and dimly lit street.  There is a tiny sign and a small little door that you step through for our riad.  The host,  Karima, answers this miniature fortress of a door.  He is very sweet and has us immediately sit down and drink tea along with some homemade cookies.  Hudson and I finally found a tea we like! It certainly helps that there is a large sugar cube in a small glass serving.   It was a total of 20 hours of travel time today.  Kids did great but were are all hungry and very tired.  We choose to go directly to sleep and skip dinner.