The last two days were marathons. Our door-to-door travel time from Casablanca to our home was 20 hours; if you add the 8 hours we spent on Monday getting to Casablanca, that’s 28 hours to travel home. Of course, in the good old days, a trip of that magnitude might take weeks (1). So I can’t really complain.

We took five planes, drove for many hours between cities, stayed in five hotels, went on approximately 15 outings. I took about 1,300 images, which is slightly fewer per day than our last trip to Southeast Asia. You’ve seen most of the best on the pages of this blog. Including this post, I’ll have published 19 times about this trip (20 if you count “What’s in my bag for Morocco”).

So how was this trip?

This was a good trip. Like most, it had some things that were better than expected and some that were worse. But I’d say it turned out right about as expected, overall.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

• The Moroccan people we encountered, mostly those who deal with tourists, were uniformly friendly and soft spoken. The few encounters we had with civilians on the street were generally pleasant.
• The food was a challenge. I’m well known as having a limited and unadventuresome palate, and the food was – to me – not something I looked forward to every day. On the other hand, I made an effort to eat what was on offer, even if some of the choices were not what I would have accepted back home. And while Sally’s restrictions are always a challenge, it was handled reasonably well on this trip.
• While we’ve made increased use of end-to-end service and guides in several of our last trips (Africa, Southeast Asia), this one was the most comprehensive, and I might say, intrusive. Our guide and driver traveled with us from city to city, and Kamal even flew with us on one leg of the journey. It felt to me like we had a full time chaperone (we did!), which is not the way I like to live. Nonetheless, having them around made things much simpler, as we didn’t have to think about the mechanics of any thing on the trip. This was reinforced on our long trip home, where we navigated through Heathrow airport on our own for about an hour while changing planes: two buses, innumerable escalators, and a lot of walking.
• Morocco, while 99% Muslim, doesn’t really try to control the behavior of visitors, and many Moroccans don’t appear particularly religious. Many woman wear head scarfs, but an equal number don’t. Some hotels and restaurants don’t serve alcohol, but many do (2). There are mosques everywhere, but it feels no different than the number of churches in the US.
• They take security very seriously. Any car trip of more than a few miles ran into multiple check points manned by the police and/or other security forces. The Amanjena hotel checked our van for explosives every time we entered during our four day stay. Passport/ticket checks and baggage screening happened multiple times for each flight, both during departures and arrivals.
• The hotels varied in quality, which is to be expected. The Amanjena, like each of the Aman hotels we’ve stayed at before, was really exceptional. The Dar Ahlam was unique and very special – they went as far as they could to make if feel like you were staying in a friend’s home. The Olinto was a beautiful facility, but not well served by the inexperienced staff. The Riad Fes had a room that I found disappointing, although the rest of the hotel was quite nice and the location, in the Medina, was unique.
• The sightseeing was, well, sightseeing. There’s very little in the world that is on my “must see” list, so it’s hard to get excited about another Roman ruin, or another mosque/church/synagogue/temple. Our walks through the Medinas and around Skoura were the most enjoyable to me, as it gave us an opportunity to see people living their lives, even if that life was selling t-shirts to tourists.

It was good to be traveling again, after the COVID break (3). We’re already planning a couple of US-based trips in 2024, as well as a beach resort this winter. So there’s lots of planning to get done.

And, finally, here are some pictures. I know you’ve been waiting 😉.

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(1) In 1492 Columbus and his crew departed the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory off the coast of Morocco southeast of Casablanca and arrived at the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean five weeks later.

(2) We consumed less alcohol on this trip than any other in memory.

(3) Our trip to Montana with our children and grandchildren was not a “tour” and was very enjoyable, but a different sort of thing than these travels.