Marrakech Part 1

Checked in online with BA the day before we flew to Marrakech, so we were straight through Gatwick in the blink of an eye! Never been so fast. Didn’t set the alarm off at the scanner, I usually do! Everything was on time, it was marvellous! My meal on the plane was a bit disappointing. I’d pre-ordered an ‘Asian Vegetarian’ meal, as there was no option for a gluten-free vegetarian one, and I thought Asian would be less likely to be pasta! I got ratatouille and rice (?!), which is a bit of a queer combination, but not ridiculously so. It came with salad and fruit salad, all a bit dull and teeth-achingly cold! I made the huge mistake of automatically saying no thanks to the “would you like wine with your meal?” cos I never drink on planes. Could have put it away for later though, daft cow! The Husband (henceforth known as Mr Fuss-Pott, or Mr F-P for short, for reasons I’ll explain in due course) had pasta, which he said was very nice.

So, we landed all safe and sound in Marrakech after a pretty impressive flyover of the city, due to the wind not being ideal in one direction and the pilot not being able to see a thing in the other direction cos of the sun setting, which gave Mr F-P a bit of a turn (he’d already been whittling about the dangers of us flying together – as if we are the royal family or something!). The airport was fine, like a lot of other airports but with nicer tiles. Got the bags and everything. We’d asked the Riad to send a taxi for us, and there was this chap with a sign that said ‘Riad Vert’’ (which was where we were going) and another one that said ‘Maddison’, which is not our name! So we made ourselves known to him and then we went outside for Mr F-P top have a fag while the taxi driver waited, we assumed for this Maddison person or persons. Anyway, he came out after a bit with 2 young guys, and we all walked out to the smallest car in the world, which was the colour of sand, and the taxi driver disappeared. So we stood and chatted – the 2 guys were Californians who now lived in Belgium, one was a Kindergarten Teacher, the other a Landscape Architect (whatever that is). The sun was going down and blokes were getting down in a sandpit and doing their prayers. It got a bit windy and me and Landscape Architect put our jackets on. We waited a bit longer. Taxi Driver came back, with a middle aged couple (proper middle aged, not like us!), and we started to wonder how exactly he was going to get us all in this teensy little beige car. Then another sand-coloured taxi came up, much bigger, and The Californian Belgians and the Middle Aged Couple got in and off they went. None of them going to the same place as us after all, so what we were waiting for all that time we’ll never know! So we got in the taxi and the Taxi Driver drove out of the car park, and then any similarity to driving as we know it totally disappeared. I think the only rule of the road in Morocco is ‘go’! Anyway, we hurtled round the city’s ring road at about 60 mph, in the heaviest and most random traffic I’ve ever seen. It consisted of: lorries, buses, taxis, cars, motor bikes, mopeds, push bikes and donkey carts! Oh yeah, did I mention there were no seatbelts?

Then we were in through the walls of the city through a ‘Bab’, which we assume means gate, and the 21st Century became the 13th. The Boy’s got a computer game called Assassin’s Creed, set in Crusade era Jerusalem, and the streets looked exactly like that! There were donkeys all over the place, and little kids running by the side of the narrowest streets, and Taxi Driver just kept honking his horn and the kids and the donkeys got out of the way. It’s impossible to adequately describe! Eventually, goggle-eyed, we stopped. Taxi Driver got out of the car, heaved our case out of the boot, locked all his doors and set off up a tiny little alley to an arch through which we could see a green door and the words ‘Riad Vert’.

Most of our photos are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arowan534/
though flickr won't let me put them all on!