Morocco

Flights out of the country can get long and sometimes have layovers. This can really mess with me physically (I have had a back surgery). So when I purchase plane tickets, I purchase the best seat I can afford. I then check the website weekly. Tip: Airlines frequently offer you an upgrade to your seat if you will pay more. Have an idea of how much you are willing to pay. For example, I have upgraded to first class before for $100 round trip! For this trip, I was not able to get the lay down seats, but I was able to get the ones with the foot rest. That really did make a big difference in my physical condition when we got there. The Morocco part of our trip was split due to the flight change, so we arrived with a couple days on our hands. I had planned for us to stay one night in Casablanca and then the next day a train to Marrakesh. We arrived in the evening and caught a shuttle to a nearby hotel. It was a basic hotel as they did not have names Americans are used to (Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott) near the airport. Onomo is a name that you see a lot in Morocco for hotels. It was a nice, clean basic hotel with a restaurant and bar. Everything we needed after a long trip and nothing more, literally. They only had double beds or 2 twin beds so we opted for the twin beds. The bartender was extremely nice and I was able to communicate with him enough to get Andy a beer glass (he collects them of beer from different countries that we have been to). The receptionists spoke English but the rest of the staff spoke French. Tip: Have a translate app ready. Remember if you are using your phone to know that you will incur international charges. The next morning we took the train to Marrakesh. I chose the train for two reasons. There were not flights available and this way we could see the countryside. You could also book a driver, but I love the train. Once we got to Marrakesh a Marriott was an option and it was lovely. The drinking water was filtered and you could drink their drinks and have ice. I had nothing booked for our 3 days here other than the hotel. We had a nice day at the pool, but we were both getting bored by 1 pm. We pulled up Viator and went a little crazy. Suddenly we had a food tour, a shopping tour and a camel ride in the desert booked. Tip: Check Viator when you are looking for things to do in a place. They had so many options that you could get overwhelmed. We loved them all. A shopping tour may sound weird, and honestly, if we were doing it again we would just go on our own, but we didn’t know where to go or how to get there. We went to a souk. I really wanted a tajine and I wanted help to find the best option. The reality was a Marrakesh souk tour includes them taking you to the high end places to purchase things like carpets and antiques. Thus Andy became obsessed with getting a door for a headboard. I will admit I was skeptical, but was totally won over in an antique shop. . . that is, until they told us the price. BTW, the owner just kept telling us that his shop was where Oprah got her doors. I kept telling him that we do not have Oprah’s money. Lol. Tip: The first price quoted in a souk is not the end price. But it was way more than I would ever pay. Even the end price was more than I wanted to pay, so we walked away. This is the part where the guide actually earned his money (this and the ride to and from the souk), he took us to another store. This was like a thrift store. Where the first store could give us documentation of the door being an antique and the time period it was from, this store could not. That did not matter to us so we purchased a door. It was still more than I really wanted to pay for a headboard, but Andy really wanted it. Tip: If you buy a big ticket item out of the country, only pay with credit card. Your credit card protects you if something doesn’t arrive. It took the door so long to get to us that I contacted American Express and they refunded us. We then had to call when it arrived and told them to charge us. Still better than being out that money. The food tour was amazing and we highly recommend it as well as the camel ride. In the middle we went to Egypt, but I am putting that as a different post, so I will continue with what we did when we came back to Morocco from Egypt. We had our standard hotel layover at Onomo and then flew to Tangier. We liked the idea of a beach vibe and it got us close to Chefchaouen, which is somewhere that I really wanted to go. We spent a day on the beach looking again at Viator and got our trip to Chefchaouen booked. I did not want a tour guide, but it ended up being a good mix. We got transportation to/from and a tour guide for a half an hour. You could stay with the tour guide longer or go off on your own. We chose to go off on our own and then had hours on our own to explore. Andy met a kid and proceeded to discuss music with him. We even introduced him to the Grateful Dead! It was a lovely day and we had a beautiful sunset stop by the beach on the way back. We enjoyed a couple more days in Tangier and then it was back to Casablanca and home. Tip: Decide how much time you have to travel around a country. We were able to take the train to Marrakesh but flew to/from Tangier. This was possible because the domestic flights in Africa are inexpensive.