Home -> Africa -> Morocco -> Travelogue 2003 -> Tuesday 16 September

The journey back home

Four o'clock in the morning! This is no time to wake up when on holiday, even though we went to bed early, last night. After taking a quick coffee we go down to the lobby to say goodbye to the nice receptionist who has helped us a lot with finding our way through Marrakech. To him and the other staff we give a good tip.

He has also arranged a cab for us which is already waiting outside. At 5 we sit in the hall of the airport, but, except for a crowd of passengers nothing happens, least of all at the counters where we have to check in: there is a delay and we hope we are in time for the connection flight in Casablanca. At 6 we can finally check in our luggage and the restaurants open so we can have another cup of coffee to awake a bit better.

It is only a 45 minutes fly to Casablanca and we have a nice view on the town. On the picture to the right you can see that either comics have been busy, or aliens have landed here and made these grain circles.

The shadow of the plane flies ahead and soon we land on Casablanca airport where we have time enough for the next round of coffee. We watch the last palmtrees we will see this year (except the ones we have at home, of course) and we hope they don't forget to load our luggage, this time. Exactly on time we go up in the air, on our way back home.

There are no more delays and no detours or stops. The sun is shining over the Moroccon coastline but soon we leave Africa and see the interior of Spain and the coastline of France. When the pilot suddenly asks the passengers if there is a physician on board, and we see a passenger having troubles breathing in the front of the plane, we fear that we have to make a stopover after all, in Belgium probably. But the passenger gets extra air through a mask and we can fly on. At 13 hours, Moroccan time, we land at Schiphol. There we are again after a wonderful trip.

The time here is 3 o'clock, two hours later. Our car still stands near the train station when we get out of the train after 25 minutes and we drive the last 2 hours back to Groningen. We are home again, always an odd feeling after having seen other countries and cultures. For me this was a sort of goodbye to Morocco, for Elisabeth it was the first introduction to Africa and the Arabian culture, and certainly not the last. We have no idea yet which countries we will visit next year, but it won't be Morocco, since there are so many more countries we haven't seen, yet. We had a fantastic experience and we hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we enjoyed spending so much time in Marrakech, the pearl of Morocco. We are very glad with all the new memories we have taken with us.

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije