Continue To Morocco

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Unfortunately they didn't feed us again until 1 hr before landing and as Jules had slept through the first meal she was about to bite someone's arm off. Breakfast was huge, ham, cheese, croissant, yoghurt, juice, coffee, a roll, fruit. Landed about 50 mins early, seemed like we'd taxid for eons, took eons to get through immigration and same to find the Sheraton. 7am, no room until 9, bummer, we are here until nearly 4. Checked in, dropped our bags and went for a walk, nothing open, back to hotel lobby - the Aussie Open was on in the bar so we went in and ordered 2 coffees, worst since Cunamulla in '09! I went to reception at 7:20 to get the passcode for the wifi and they now have a room, awesome. Sleep, couldn't, got about 40 mins, shower, watched federed lose, club sandwich and Heinekin, Wozniaki lost too, time to check-in on Easyjet. Duty free bottle of Veuve (for my birthday), can't get Dirhams until we get there, worst coffee since the Sheraton (hopefully an airport thing), so looking forward to italy.Longest boarding ever, bus to plane, what you get with budget airlines, in the air, only got Kroenberg, not bad though, veggie chips awesome, in Aussie I just turned 50, will milk tha for a while. Our pilgrimage finally over after 37 hours of travel, nice to actually get somewhere.Landed at 6PM, took an hour to get thru immigration, unbelievable number of people as several flights had landed at the same time. Omar, our driver must have been very patient waiting for us. It was raining, poor visibility, maniac drivers, but we got to the riad in one piece. Hisham met us and explained he was Mohammed's nephew, not much English, so was a bit of a challenge - one of the reasons we chose this place was because it said Mohammed had very good English. Anyway, after seeing our room - fantastic - and having tea and some pastries, we were able to get a couple of restaurant recommendations. As it was night and we hadn't got our bearings yet, we chose the closest one and still managed to get lost! A young boy came to our aid and took us to the restaurant and then promptly asked for $50 euros for his trouble! I gave him 50 dirhams, about $7, which would have been a fair bit for the cheeky little bastard anyway. We sit, unfortunately too close to the musicians, our waiter had good English, couple of Casablanca beers and set menu ordered (been told not to do set menus as you never finish them - they were right).Moroccan salads, kebabs, pastilla, chicken tagine, fruit (a platter of oranges and bananas), more tea, a bottle of Moroccan Cab Sav (passable) and 1400 dirhams later we were gone, mildly amused by the entertainment, some wandering minstrals accompanied by 3 big black women with shrill voices then a very average belly dancer. Highlight (not) was an old woman belly dancing with a plate of househiold candles on her head! We smuggled the remains of the wine back to the riad and enjoyed a late night smoke on the terrace at the top of the building, quite cool, about 6 degrees. we retire at midnight, I just turned 50 again!

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