Friday, August 30
Our uneventful travels started in Ottawa at 9:45 pm Thursday evening when we departed on Air Canada for Frankfurt, Germany. After a 7 hour flight, we arrived in Frankfurt at 10:30 am Friday morning, local time, and aside from having to go through security despite the fact we were just connecting, and not sleeping much, it was a great flight.
Frankfurt is a really busy airport, with flights going to all over the world, on airlines from all over the world. There were some that we saw that I had no clue where they originated. It was a long day, but we discovered that the airport has supplied lovely chairs with foot rests at the far end of our terminal and so we spent most of the day there, drifting in and out of sleep, eating, and people watching.
Although we weren’t really visiting Germany (for another trip – hopefully a river cruise) I decided to participate in their cuisine anyway. When in Rome….. I had a Frankfurter and potato salad for lunch, which was excellent, and a huge pretzel with my afternoon tea. No beer for me but we were early for Octoberfest anyway.
I had a lovely conversation with a young woman travelling back to Bosnia after spending her summer in Vermont, USA. She had lots to say and was really very entertaining. She was surprised that I’d been to Bosnia and I was able to tell her about our time in Sarajevo and Mostar. Her view was that most tourists only travel to Dubrovnik, Croatia and don’t bother with her part of the world. We had an interesting discussion about the political situation there and she said she goes about her life trying hard to ignore it.
Finally, we boarded our Lufthansa flight to Casablanca and took off at 10:15 pm for the three hour flight. It was a nice newish plane and they served dinner despite the late hour. Right on schedule we arrived into Aeroport Mohammed V.
The formalities seemed to be just that, and in no time we were meeting up with our G Adventures driver who would take us to the hotel where we’ll spend 3 nights. While waiting for the driver a casually but nicely dressed (and rather nice looking I have to say) come over to ask us if we were alright. We got chatting and turns out he’s head of the local police or airport police or something. He was very friendly and gracious and warmly welcomed us to the country. Nanci’s customs agent was very warmly welcoming as well. Mine was busy dealing with another traveller who didn’t know what hotel he was staying at and they weren’t going to let him through until they found out. So starting to get a sense of the people.
On our short drive from the airport to our somewhat tired hotel, we saw a bit of Casablanca. The streets are very quiet, which is not surprising given that it’s 2:30 am. There are modern buildings and lots of the merchants we see every day, like Burger King and MacDonald, Shell, UPS, etc. The billboards are predominantly in French, some with Arabic as well. And there is lots of English as well. Everyone we’ve run in to so far has spoken perfect English.
We are fairly near the water here, and we can see the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque which we will visit and tour in the next couple of days. Off to bed after 24 hours of travel and 36 hours with little sleep. As I have said before, travel is great, except for the travel part.
Lois' Adventures 