Marrakech to Casablanca was a pretty flat trip, and not spectacular compared to previous legs of the trip. I'm afraid I complained about Casablanca on a previous post, so I have to backtrack and say that coming in from a different direction poses a different picture. Or is it just the rich part of town, by the seaside? Anyway, they have a very nice beach frontage, and we could not resist going to Macdonalds for lunch. Delicious.
This is outside one of the largest mosques in the world, in Casablanca.
Our flight back was at 12.10 pm so we thought the best option was to take the 6.15 am shuttle to the airport as the guide said it would be crowded.
Much long winded waiting later, we finally arrived at the check out counter, just then a two men seemed to arrive from the queue to the left, and he said would it be ok if he got in front of us. As we were not in a hurry, and he somehow gave the impression that he had been in the wrong queue and needed to go urgently, we said ok, go ahead. I thought queuing was a peculiarly English thing.
Turns out the Moroccan French have strict expectations on this.
The woman with a husband and baby behind us went insane at this, with a lot of shouting and screaming. The security guy right there, just looked on and did nothing. In the end the guy was not processed, and I went forward to the desk.
There was a commotion behind me, but I concentrated on checking our bags in. Rose told me that the woman chased after the queue jumper and gave him a good slap on the face. A fisticuffs ensued, only stopped by the security guards. The rest of the queue seemed to be on the woman's side big time.
Rose reckoned it made her day. If only she knew what was to come.
For some reason, God saw fit to let us land safely in Barcelona, but then decided we needed to lose a bag. In my obviously faulty wisdom I had chosen to keep the boat and train tickets in that bag. Not a good plan as it turned out, because it had the hotel voucher for Barcelona in there too.
Step one, go to lost luggage department. Boarding passes, etc given over, ok, what hotel are you staying at? Don't know, it is in the lost bag. The upshot is we got a piece of paper to say we were coming back at 1 pm the following day and were able to get out of the arrivals area, to decide our next move. Having a bit more time now, I got onto a computer in the business centre, and booked us in for a night at the Tryp Airport Hotel. I thought that should be a cheap taxi, and the meter read about 7euros, then he says all trips from the airport minimum 20 euros. Hmff. This hotel is a minimalist delight, very clean.
As a person now needing clean laundry each night, I was delighted to find that hotels provide a nice little sink next to the toilet, for doing your laundry in. Only thing is that could have been mounted a little higher. For drying, they have one mounted on the wall for drying things, although they usually do not have a lot of horsepower.
With a bit of luck we might be able to see the Sagrada Familia after all.
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