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We are now in Morocco. Our last couple days in New York were relatively slow. We had tickets to shows so we were limited in what we could do around them and the cooler, wetter weather meant that we weren't up for as much walking as before. Sunday we had breakfast and said goodbye to Tracey, Judith, Wayne, and Bill, then waited 5 hours until it was time to take a cab to JFK Airport so that we would be three hours early there. We got to read a lot and surf the web. At the airport I got the brainwave to search for reviews of our airline to Casablanca, Royal Air Maroc. To say they were bad was an understatement. Seriously, if you want to see how bad things can get on an airline, Google “Royal Air Maroc reviews” and read the two pages of horror stories on the first link. I immediately went to buy extra water and an earphone splitter so Barb and I could watch the same movie on the eeepc if we wanted to. I wasn't too worried about poor service since I was going to try out the jet lag cure that involves a 16 hour fast and Barb had trail mix. I figured all we needed to do was sleep through whatever horrors would come our way and pray for our baggage to be there at the end. Once we got on board though, it was far better than I'd read. I tried to greet the cabin staff in French and no one was rude or surly. The food was good (I made it 14 hours into my fast before giving in), and the plane was old, but in fine shape. It was 1980's vintage with an entertainment screen hanging down every 7 seats, the good news was that it also had 1980's leg room. I was very comfortable and got nearly 3 hours of sleep “Extraordinary Rendition” style (Double ear plugs and an eye-mask). Barb sadly doesn't sleep well on planes and is slogging it out today as we train our way to F'es.
The ugly reviews also slammed the Airport outside of Casablanca, I was prepared for almost no customs officers and the whole plane load of people to take hours. Again I was pleasantly surprised. We were through customs and waiting for our luggage in 15 minutes. Our luggage showed up an hour later but that was fine, we had plenty of time to catch the early train connecting to Fés. We got a local SIM card to make cheap calls and got on the train. There we met two young men with the strangest accent. It turns out they were Brazilian but working in Cork, Ireland. Sort of a portuguese accent with a brogue thrown in. They were trying to return from a holiday in Dubai by flying south of the Icelandic volcano plume and then going north via train.
They had almost no information about how they might do it, but our guidebook gave them some train info they could use. Our train to Fés included a change at Casablanca so they departed there for Tangier.
At this point, I need to say a big thanks to the teachers at our French school in Toronto. I started taking lessons in January and so far today I have bought train tickets, a coffee and snacks, asked about a taxi to Fés (way too much) and understood the announcement of a track change for our train. I'm feeling pretty good (and need to make sure I do some homework while I'm here).
So in the time I have been writing this I have been looking up to watch the countryside roll by. A chunk of the trip includes views of the ocean in the distance as we are traveling along the coast. As per everywhere else in the world, nobody puts their prettiest buildings beside the railroad tracks, so we've seen our share of slums too.
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