All things travel related

Hello from London

We landed on Monday night and it has been a busy week setting up here and getting organized. I have found a job which I am really excited about starting in a week and we have found a lovely wee flat in Clapham Common. Hopefully we can move in this week. Hamish has several meetings with recruiters lined up this week so we are well on our way to being proper London dwellers.

I promised some travel-related stories from Morocco, and some pictures. I think this sequence of photos says a lot about our experience...

Between the four of us, we traveled by boat, plane, overnight sleeper train, local train (which broke down about 4 hours from where we were supposed to be), camel, petite taxi (mostly Fiat Unos and the like), grande taxi (old 1990's Mercs),  tourist bus, local bus, and horse and cart.

Petite taxis operate only within the city limits. Grande taxis can go between cities, if they make it. One of our grande taxis seemed to be missing 1st and possibly 2nd gear for at least part of our trip between our broken down train in the middle of nowhere and Moulay Idriss where we were headed.

Our train and luggage pre-departure

Getting off the train in the middle of nowhere

Our grande taxi on the way to Moulay Idriss

The other thing about grande taxis is that they're allowed to take 6 passengers. In fact, unless you hire the whole car for an extra fee, the operators will cram 6 of you in to maximize the fare. We had 4 across the back seat (two women from Moulay Idriss, Becs and me) and 3 across the front (the driver, Hamish and Christian). Hilarious.

Cosy in the front seat

Next up in the Morocco installments is the kindness of strangers. I'm on the way to being convinced that Moroccans are the friendliest people on the planet (I've got a fair few countries to go before I can confirm that but it's my starting point for now). After that we will be into our UK experiences!

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