Morocco! Well, Morocco tomorrow…

I'm on my way! It's a long trip, as I'm flying Raleigh to JFK to Paris to Casablanca. It's about 20 hours in all. At check-in, the clerk said, oh, so bad you didn't check yesterday—you could have switched to a flight last night and flown direct to Paris, the plane had so many empty seats! It never occurred to me to check for something like that. Oh well. (On the return, I do fly directly from Paris to NC.) But if I had flown out early, I would have missed a lovely evening catching up with an old friend. I was really lucky— that friend put me up for last night and drove me to the airport. He's going to pick me up too when I get back, so, in addition to having a great dinner with good company, I saved a lot of money (parking and hotel).

Also, if I had flown early to Paris, I would have had to enter the country and get a hotel for the night, then go back through security. So, it's all for the best.

Hmm, what else have I learned already today? One cool thing is that I got my Global Express pass from TSA, which will make customs really fast and easy when I get back. A second benefit is that I automatically get TSA Pre-check, so almost no line for security and I didn't have to take anything out of my bag to go through security. Yep, the iPad etc. just stay in the bag. Very cool. And, on a more mundane level, why did I not think before putting my toothbrush/toothpaste in my checked bag?? For a trip that is almost a day long! So, $8 later, I now I have new toothbrush and travel toothpaste, and I won't be offending my near neighbors (at least not from that).

I know I posted the map below in my last post, but it's good to have a visual reference when I'm talking about where I'll be. The numbers on the map are the number of nights I'll spend in each location. Here's a link to the trip I'm doing: https://www.gate1travel.com/africa/morocco/2023/escorted/morocco-escorted-18dabsma23.aspx

As I said, this is an escorted trip, so I'll be on a bus with lots of people, but there is a fair amount of free time. I did sign up for a couple of extra excursions (🐪 ride in the dunes, for example, though it is actually about 100 miles from the Sahara, no matter what they say in the listing). I thought about trying to list places that I'm excited about, but I'm excited about the whole trip. I did the longest trip they offered, as I figured it's not likely that I'll go to Morocco more than once. (Of course, I said the same about Iceland, and I'm probably going back for a short trip with a friend later this year.)

I started this at the airport in Raleigh. Now I'm at JFK, and I've got about 2 more hours till boarding. To get from the domestic Delta gate to the Air France gate took: 1) about a 2 mile walk in the first terminal...okay, maybe 1-1.5 miles, but it was a long walk; 2) Train to another terminal, 3) bus to the terminal I needed, since construction prevented the train from stopping there; and 4) more walking! Needless to say, I had to exit security and then re-enter at the new terminal. Security here was messier than at Raleigh, and pre-check didn't get me much except a shorter line. But, regardless, I'm here and had a sandwich, and now I wait. Oh, the good part about the long hike from plane 1 to plane 2 is that my suitcase is checked all the way through, so I didn't have to haul it through a train, bus, and hike. Per the AirTag, it's still several terminals away, so I hope that it migrates in my direction soon.

Next stop is Paris, at 5:45 AM their time. I've got a scant 1 h 20 m to change planes, but it's the same airline and the same terminal, so it should be fine. Then a 3.5 hour flight to Casablanca, arriving at 10:30 AM. I don't spend any time in Casablanca at all. I transfer immediately to Rabat, where I meet up with the tour group. I started to say, that's when the adventure begins, but for me it actually begins the minute I get on a flight to anywhere!

I'll try to post some pictures and initial impressions tomorrow night, unless I'm too wiped out to make sense.

Mmm