LOCATION: Hong Kong to Zurich to Casablanca
What's happening?
Absolutely. We made it. Have touched four continents (Australia, Asia, Europe and Africa) in a 42 hour door to door travel schedule. Certainly palatable because of generous seating allowance on Cathy Pacific and the hospitality of the #Aspire Lounge in Zurich.
The Adventure
Hong Kong to Zurich
All organisation has run smoothly - we have been halted at each of the airports with a combination of pat downs or bag checks - but with plenty of time up our sleeves we just spread ‘em or unzipped ‘em depending on what they are searching. Plenty of English in the airports and plenty of people to help us if we had a query.
Stark contrast between Hong Kong and Zurich International Airports. Hong Kong was buzzing - heaps to see and do - shops, food people everywhere. At Zurich, a simple coppection of A, B, D and E alleyways which were the gates for arrivals and departures. A top floor of various branded “lounges” - a few grab and go food outlets, a Starbucks and some souvenir shops. Maybe we missed something. And to be honest, once we were set up in the lounge we were happy with the view, the comfort and the food and drinks on offer. The spirits were a “pour your own” affair and @Mac was using his own scale for measuring a nip for his rums.
And ... this was the big one. Thirteen hours. But the timing suited us - we settled quickly - happy with our seat space, the entertainment options and the food options. Really, just had to do the best we could grabbing some zzzzs and periodically checking the map while running the "are we NEARLY THERE yet" question.
Spending an inordinate amount of time analysing the messages and data provided from his new watch. It randomly, during the flight, advises him to get up and walk around, he received two notifications because his heart rate and sleep pattern have changed from his normal and measurements for energy resting and energy active have us totally confused. Hilarious deep dive - all we know is that we have basically spent two days on our bottoms and the only major activity which elevates the heart rate has been associated with pulling on our compression stockings!
Zurich to Morocco
A literal hop step and a jump on this one. Three hours south on a flight that had 40 people on it - the flight attendant told us “It will be full in August.” We settled in for the relatively smooth flight (with our female pilot) with room to spare and once again took advantage of some sleep time intermingled with food and some Netflix content we had downloaded.
I digress here because after visiting the loo on this flight a couple of times I want to suggest that airports include, on arrival, a shoe bath. You know, one of those trays of water and disinfectant we had on the Antarctic ship. You walk through water and disinfectant to clean the soles of your shoes. Really, really REALLY needed it after visiting this bathroom. Gross.
Anyway, back to the trek.
The big news, not only did we arrive on time, but so did our luggage. A speedy trip though passport check and waved through at customs, we made a quick dash to find the "cheap" ATM we had read about. Zigged left instead of right, but eventually found it and withdrew the maximum amount. This is a "closed" currency, which means you could only access on arrival and, filing this info for the future, need to remember it is illegal to take it out of the country. Disadvantage is that the ATM only dispenses large bills - will need to source some smaller denominations.
The eSIM clicked in without any hassles which was handy because driver @Mohammed had been sending us messages since we had arrived in Zurich. It was no surprise that we easily spotted him with our name scrawled on his board. It was a 45 minute drive through peak hour to deliver us to the hotel and that time disappeared quickly because it was filled with 23 year old @Mohammed telling us about his studies (he speaks four languages but wants to speak eight), his aspiration is to own his own business (wants to own his own tourist transport vehicle), his studies (he is off to Spain to complete his Masters - just needs 40 000 euro) and his search for "a wife who will love and respect me" (just out of a 5 year relationship - she didn't respect him and has moved to Italy.)
First impressions of Casablanca. Beautiful warm temperature, lots and lots and lots of dust in air and on surfaces, probably 70 / 30 for western dress / religious garb, the majority of the cars are either black or white, incredible infrastructure development between airport and city, McDonalds and KFC dominate billboard advertising, French and English signage very prominent (don't think we are noticing Arabic because script is just squiggle lines) and people in hospitality and tourism are very grateful to see you.
And no-one was more grateful to see us than tour leader @Mohammed (yep, seriously) and our fellow travellers @Liz and @Bill (easy to remember because of the #Royal connection Elizabeth and William - ha ha, and there are only two others to remember.)
We arrived in the lobby at 6.10 for the 6 pm meeting and were greeted with deep sighs of relief and wide smiles. Everyone else on the trip had CANCELLED because of the WAR's impact on their transport arrangements. WOW. We are kinda surprised that with this turn of events, that #Inspiring Vacations hadn't cancelled on us. But no, it was all systems go. Coincidentally at the check in desk, we spoke with a couple who were on the FINAL day of their 15 day-er with #Inspiring - their report .... fabulous trip (reassured us we will thoroughly enjoy) and they had 14 as their complement.
All I could think about was that with just two ladies on our "bus" this would make toilet stops so much easier. But @Mac and @Bill immediately had bigger concerns - because of the small number there would not be the traditional tipping kitty handled by the guide ... that needed to be handled individually. No pressure guys. Darn, don't love the whole tipping thing.
First job at hand was this pre trip briefing with "the group." @Mohammed pressed on with the one hour run down of how things would work and what we could expect over the next 15 days and of course there was no shortage of questions from @TheRoyals and @Macs. @Mohammed was great and @TheRoyals, from Perth whose luggage DID NOT arrive (it had spent two days in Milan without them), are clued in, chatty, were wearing clean clothes because their bags have now arrived, and already knew the quirks of how to buy a beer and water. 😂
Our highlights of the evening: found our way to our comfortable 11 th story room, dodged the traffic and crossed the road with locals at the pedestrian crossing (cars do not give way to pedestrians), bought some water (got some small change now), found a chicken shop across the road (no joke, why did the chicken cross) for take away dinner , tried to catch the sunset from the roof tops (oops, just missed it) but to be honest, our entire focus was on a shower and bed.
We were knackered. First day BC .... we have survived.
Survival Barometer
Steps: 12 358 - walking through airports and up and down plane aisles
Weather: 30 on landing in Casablanca - beautiful
Can you believe that?
A little background from Co-Pilot. Feel a little better now after reading this - because I don't think I have actually seen the movie .. ever!
🎬 The movie Casablanca created a tourism industry for a place it never showed. The film wasn’t shot in Morocco, but it shaped the city’s identity so strongly that locals say:“Hollywood invented our reputation, we just went with it.”
Today's Spot the J clue - there are two!
"Learning all I can about the desert!"
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