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!