Back at Cabri Regional Park

Said goodbye to Wendy and Phil in Moose Jaw yesterday morning (thanks again guys!) and we were on the road yesterday morning just after 9:00am.

Not much in the way of traffic. Just put the cruise control on and drove. Made it to Swift Current around 11:00am and we headed straight to the Salvation Army Thrift store!

Back to the Prairies

Up bright and early yesterday morning at 5:00am. Had to be downstairs at the Radisson Hotel Toronto airport for the shuttle bus at 6:00am. Got to the airport and through security and to the gate with lots of time to spare for our 8:00am flight.

It's a good thing airports have finally figured out how important it is for them to supply free wifi to people in the terminal. We've been in 10 different airports so far this year alone, and they have all had fast free wifi.

There wasn't any kicking and screaming from us!

Well, this was an interesting day!

Let me back up to Wednesday morning when we were first able to "check in" online for our 9:00am Thursday flights from Ottawa to Toronto and Toronto to Regina. At that time, our seat assignments for the first flight from Ottawa to Toronto came up normally. We had seats side by side and on a larger jet that had economy seating three rows on each side with an aisle in the middle.

But on the Toronto to Regina leg of the trip, I noticed that things seemed abnormally "full". In fact, when the system tried to assign seats, it put Ruth in an upgraded seating section with no extra charge, and me in a single seat in the economy section at the rear of the plane.

Back in the air again!

Sitting here in busy Toronto airport, waiting for our flight to Regina, Saskatchewan. We weren't supposed to be here this early. Our flight from Ottawa was scheduled to leave at 9:00am, but there was another flight at 8:00am, and they asked if anybody would volunteer to leave early. Okay!

Then, we sat on the plane for an extra 45 minutes because they are repairing a runway in Toronto and the arrivals had to be scheduled... or something like that! Can't win. But, we don't care and it's out of our control anyhow. It's all part of travel.

What's on the agenda for next winter?

Did some work around Ruth's dad's house yesterday. Ruth did some yardwork while I took off the winter tires and rims on his vehicle and installed the summer ones.

In the afternoon, I went for lunch with an old friend of mine who used to be my accountant partner when I owned the auto body repair shop many years ago. Nice to catch up since I hadn't seen him in about two years.

Do you remember Expo 67?

Our daughter Lindsey lent us her car, and we drove up to Ruth's dad's yesterday. On the way, we stopped at a Walmart to pick up a few things. One of those things was a new battery for one of Lindsey's key fobs. These new cars don't have an ignition key. Simply a thing (called a fob) that hangs from your key chain, and so long as it's in the car, the car will start with the push of a button.

But, these fobs won't work when the tiny battery in them goes dead.

What have we been up to...

We finally had a nice spring day. Yesterday was up to about 20C (68F) and mostly sunny although there was a bit of a wind. You can tell that winter is over in this part of the world, but April in Ottawa is a bit of a wildcard. Sunny again today, but only a high of 11C (52F).

Saturday morning, Ruth and I took our grandson Cameron out for his birthday.

Another update from our friends Volkan and Heather

It's been a while since we've had a guest post from our friends Volkan and Heather. They had sent us an update on their travels while we were away in Europe, but we never got around to publishing it for you.

They recently spent some time in New Zealand and wrote to tell us about it...

What does it cost for five months of travel in Europe?

Well, it's not as much as you might think.

We spent $14,000 CAD ($10,800 USD) for the six month period between November 1st and now. An average of $2,333 ($1,800 USD) per month. That includes all flights as well as our return trip back to Canada at Christmas time.

That total also includes all of our expenses, because that's the only way that it's meaningful to anybody. It even includes our new Samsung smartphone. Yep. Everything.

Too many rules!

We've just been spending time with our daughter's family these last few days. Grandson Cameron (6) is in grade one, so he's gone to school all day. So granddaughter Sadie gets a lot of our time.

She sure is a character!

Could we live there?

Well, we sure did have an interesting winter, didn't we?

Certainly not a "normal" winter for us. Sherman the motorhome remains parked up here at our daughter's house where he has been since last October. And he'll be sitting here for a while yet because we have no plans to move him until October of this year!

And, we have now visited 33 different countries. We've been in 12 different countries in the last six months alone! Wow!

Body Bark

A company we had never heard of sent us a couple of t-shirts last Christmas. They simply asked us to try them out, and write about them if we liked them.

We're always willing to offer our opinion, especially on a product that can be related to our travels. And most of you know that we travel very light. So when we did some research about this lightweight, comfortable, easy to wash and dry clothing, we took them up on the idea!

Not a bad deal on a Canadian SIM card...

On the way up to Ruth's dad's place yesterday, we stopped at the off leash dog park. This is a really popular place for dogs to be running around loose and playing with other dogs. I'm pretty sure that many people come here every day to give themselves and their pups some exercise.

It was a little chilly, but after all it is only mid April...and we are in Canada!

Introducing...Chester!

A bit late getting started this morning! We wanted to come up to Ruth's dad's place fairly early for Easter Monday, so today's blog post had to wait until we got up here.

Our daughter Lindsey and son in law Justin had a spa gift card from his work that they wanted to use up, so they took advantage of the fact that Grandma and Grandpa are now here visiting. And that was fine with us, so we spent the day looking after Cameron (6) and Sadie (3 1/2), Boy, they sure are growing!

Back in the motorhome!

Yes, we slept in our motorhome last night! Felt great to be back in our own bed again, even if it's only for a few nights.

It was a long travel day yesterday as we flew from Barcelona, Spain to Montreal, Canada and then Montreal to Ottawa.

Here's the whole story...

One night in Barcelona

We were up at 5:00am Friday morning! Probably could have slept until 5:30am, but this way we didn't have to feel rushed. We were outside at the corner waiting for our pre arranged taxi driver at exactly 6:30am.

But he wasn't there!

Getting ready to go home...

Writing this Thursday evening because we will be up at 5:30am Friday to get on our 8:30am flight from Tangier to Barcelona. Then one night in Barcelona, and Saturday we fly back to Canada!

We had booked the overseas flight a long time ago...back in early September of last year! So I wasn't really paying attention at the time that April 15th was in the middle of Easter weekend. And that Easter holidays are a big deal in Spain.

We had a very successful day!

We planned an afternoon trip from Tangier to Tetouan, a small city near the east coast here in northern Morocco. But first, we had to figure out how to get there. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a whole lot of detail online, so I'm going to include those details here for the benefit of future travelers.

Unless you hire an expensive guide and private driver, there are only two choices of transportation... the bus, or what they call a "grand" taxi"!

A good hike, but with some obstacles...

Another beautiful day here in Tangier, Morocco. So we decided to go for a hike. We had wanted to take a coastal trail all the way to the Cap Spartel lighthouse that looks out over the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of about 12 kms (7.5 miles), and then take a taxi back home.

But we encountered a few obstacles!

I'll bet not many Americans know about this...

We had planned to do a couple of day trips during our four full days here in Tangier. But so far, we haven't got any ambition to sit on a bus for any length of time. One of the day trips we had planned is to the popular "blue town" of Chefchaouen, or simply "Chaouen" as the locals call it. But it's 3 hours each way by bus! Apparently it's slightly quicker in a collectivo van, but we're still not ambitious.

Another is to the beach town of Asilah. It's only an hour bus ride away, so we may still do that.

Anyhow, yesterday we just wandered around Tangier. There are a few interesting things to see here, and we managed to (almost) match up a couple of my dad's photos from his visit here in 1954.

Made it to Tangier, Morocco!

We didn't have to rush yesterday morning because our train wasn't scheduled to leave until 12:30pm. And so we finally got caught up on our blog posting and photo editing from our three days away in the desert without internet.

We said goodbye to our AirBnb hosts Jamila and Mohammed. They were really good hosts and we're glad we found a common ground communicating in Spanish. That wouldn't be the case with our next host!

Exploring Rabat, the capital city of Morocco

We planned a long walking tour of Rabat, leaving from our AirBnb apartment at just before noon. Clear blue sky all day, with a high around 28C (82F).

First stop was the nearby train station where we bought two more rail tickets for Sunday. We fly out of Tangier next Friday, so we decided to head directly there for five nights and do some day trips from Tangier.

Marrakesh to Rabat train ride

This is the second post for today as we get ourselves up to date. If you missed it, you can go back and read the earlier post here.

We were up and out by 9:15am Friday morning and on our way walking to the Marrakesh train station. We had tickets for the 10:45am train to Rabat.

Avoid the Marrakesh street food market!

Still getting caught up on our blog posts after our three day desert tour. So this post details our day on Thursday the 6th.

We stayed in the room all morning, getting caught up on internet and sorting through photos. You have to take a down day every now and again, and we were certainly due for one. But, we had to get to the train station to buy our tickets for Friday so we were going to have to get out and do that.

Besides, we just can't sit around doing nothing!

We were dreading the long ride back

This is the third and final post regarding our Sahara Desert camel excursion.

We were up right at 6:00am as the desert guide had told us. They had said to get up, watch the sunrise, and then we would be hopping on the camels and returning to where the van was and having breakfast.

We climbed the big sand dune and watched the horizon for the sun to appear. And then we heard a voice yelling at us.

Camel riding in the Sahara Desert!

This is the second post of the day as we're catching up from our three days without internet. So you might want to start with the earlier post if you don't want to miss anything. You can access it here.

We were up bright and early Tuesday morning and arrived at breakfast right on time. Apparently breakfast in Morocco is typically bread, crepes, two different types of jam, and tea and coffee. Oh, and olives.

This tour reminded us of why we don't do group tours!

Well, that was a pretty wild three days. As always, we're going to write  it up as three separate daily blog posts, so if you're just reading this one now... stay tuned because another one will be posted later today! Hopefully we'll be all caught up and back on schedule by tomorrow.

Okay, so we had booked a 3 day 2 night group tour to the Sahara Desert. We don't often do group tours because we like to make our own schedule. And we haven't done a group tour since we were in Iceland in the fall of 2012.

This tour reminded us of why we don't do group tours!

You may not hear from us for a couple of days...

We're up early this morning because we're heading out into the desert for a three day/two night getaway. No idea what kind of cell service we'll have where we're going, so you may not hear from us for a couple of days. I'll try and do up a blog post when we can, and worst case scenario you'll hear all about it when we return on Wednesday evening.

But, we still have to tell you about our day yesterday!

March Expenses

Wow. March was a great month, wasn't it?? We were in six different countries... Spain, Italy, San Marino, Monaco, France, and Morocco!

We had a fantastic time, and we pretty much did it exactly as we wanted to. But, it came at a price. Definitely one of our higher months for expenses. Italy is certainly not as cheap as Spain! We spent a total of $2,448 CAD ($1,836 USD) for the month.

(The following figures are all in Canadian dollars. For U.S. dollar equivalent, you can subtract about 25%.)

We like to try and blend in...

Many women in Morocco wear a head scarf...or a "hijab" as it is called in Arabic. Hijab is actually just the Arabic word for "cover". It's a tradition related to the Muslim religion, and it essentially is a means of displaying modesty.

I say many women, because while Morocco is a Muslim country, it is not an Islamic country. There is no law here saying that women have to wear a hijab, and it is not necessarily expected. While in Islamic countries (such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran) it is a different story.

And so here in Morocco, many women do not wear a hijab. It is a personal choice.

Every few steps there is something interesting to see...

We were sitting having our morning tea and hot chocolate (no, we don't drink coffee) when our host Marco came downstairs and offered to take us out  for breakfast. Sure, we're up for that thanks! We explained about our gluten intolerance, and he said he would do his best to ask about the ingredients.

And off we went on the busy inner streets of Marrakesh.