A Word about Travel

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Travel is not all R&R and sometimes the most challenging thing can be getting where you are headed, still talking in complete sentences. This is especially true if your travel involves something other than a one destination, all-inclusive visit.

You need to arrange and coordinate your transportation, your accommodation, the things you want to see and do there, all in a safe (physically as well as cybersafe) manner.

Now my travel was booked at the last minute, and planned accordingy. As a result, some of my travel has not been the most straight-forward. For instance, I decided to book a return ticket to Europe since I knew I would be here at some point, and ended up confirming to Frankfurt at the last possible minute of the seat sale. After that, I explored what I wanted to do, using Frankfurt as my base. There were other options open to me under that original seat sale. But I did not want to fly into London or Paris because of frequent strikes and weather disruptions. So Frankfurt it was.

Morocco has always been in my sights as a place I wanted to visit so I started to look at how to get there from Frankfurt. The options are a little limited, and I was reluctant to fly the national airline particularly after reading an article about how passengers had started the airplane on fire in protest after sitting on the runway for hours and hours.....So I ended up choosing yet another seat sale on Iberia Airlines that flew through Madrid. As it turned out, part of the flight was code shared with Royal Air Maroc so I was no further ahead in that regard, although I did save a lot of money flying Iberia (about 50% of the Royal Air Maroc ticket price). So that was good. But the aggravation of Madrid made this route very very questionable!

Madrid has 4 terminals. You are advised what terminal you will be flying into and which terminal you will be flying out of, but you are not advised of the gate of departure until one hour before lift-off. Let me repeat that fact. Once you arrive in Madrid, you need to hang around the monitors and watch for the announced gate of departure for your flight. This is posted no more than one hour prior to departure, and once it is posted there is a mad dash to make it to the gate in time for boarding. Although you may be in the correct terminal, you may have a 20 plus minute trek to your gate of departure. Why do this? I can't believe that the airport has not pre-assigned gates for flights so what is the rationale? One might think it has something to do with terrorism, but who knows.

There are no announcements over the Madrid PA system either, except for the following: "We will NOT be announcing flights, departure gates or boarding. You are entirely responsible for monitoring your flight, confirming the gate of departure and any changes to that announced gate, and ensuring y board at the appropriate time."

Some weather delayed my arrival into Madrid so that I was delayed getting into Marrakech. I was not looking forward to landing after midnight and having to find my way to the riad alone (and you have now seen the laneway pictures so can understand that) so I tried to call the riad to ensure that my ride would be there at that hour. No joy. It seems that the Madrid airport - an international airport - has disabled all calls to Morocco from the pay phones there. Cannot make a call to Morocco with cash or credit card. This was a fact that no one on the Info desk or security were aware of either, apparently. Anyway I happened to be in the one terminal that had internet access so was able to send an email to the riad but did not know if it had been received until I arrived.

The interesting thing though, was that my later flight was quite an interesting experience. It was packed, and took quite the scenic route to Marrakech. It flew totally on Morocco time but it was hard to get frustrated. It was a very communal and warm experience once we got on the plane - nobody here has heard of the "one carry-on" rule but nevertheless everyone was on and things stored in record time. Everyone helped everyone else find a suitable storage space and the next thing you know off we went and were served a snack - which here means meal - and there was definitely a sense of family on the plane. I don't know how else to explain it. The gentleman next to me was from Tangier, living in Holland, and was looking forward to his visit. He spent some time pointing out the well lit mosque in Casablanca and other sites as best he could, and being very kind. So a very very long travel day for me, but other than looking forward to a shower, I arrived quite content with the day (all 30 hours of it) and very very happy to see my ride waiting in Marrrakech.

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Photos

Travelling light
with wheels this time....