(fused)

As I posted earlier and twittered; I’m back from my holiday in Morocco. I had an amazing time, spoiled slightly by the poor flight back, but everything preceeding that was amazing.

I took hundreds of photos, I’m just sorting them out into the ones worth putting online (I’ll make a full gallery post in a few days, but I’ve put some of my favourites up)

We flew out from T2 at Heathrow with Royal Air Maroc, and the flight wasn’t as bad as I’d expected it to be, the food was alright and the flight was relatively smooth. First night was spent in the Hotel Foucal in Marrakech; which also had ‘not excellent’ reviews, but once again it wasn’t bad.

We had a tour around Marrakech on the Wednesday; in horse drawn carriages to begin with, and then we walked around some smaller streets, and saw things like a tannery (where they make leather) and public bakery. The tannery stunk, don’t ever work or live near one if you go to a country like Morocco. We also saw a chemist, of sorts, there, which sold creams and powders for more or less anything you can think of, and then a bit more. They had huge tubs of brightly coloured liquids around the walls, which gave it a bit of a ‘nutty professor’ feel.

We spent 6 days walking after that, with an additional rest day in the middle, which we spent in a small town up in the mountains. I have a few awesome photos of that place, including of the village store, which was little more than a cupboard in the street. On the last of those days, we climbed ToubKal, starting out at about 4am, it took us 3 and a half hours to get from base camp to the top (about 1000m climb, we started at 3,000 and something metres).

We then went on to Essaouira, where we spent 2 days, exploring the town, spending money and just having fun. The sunday, we travelled back to Marrakech, and went to McDonalds, took photos and saw the souk (market). Monday, we flew home- the flight back was awful. The flight attendant people were rude and obviously grumpy; and they spilt coffee over the guy sitting infront of us. We all got kicked off of the plane at Casablanca with no warning, and had to ask directions twice thanks to lack of correct signs, and go through embarkation again. When we got back on, they happily announced ‘we’ve just sprayed the plane with insectiside to comply with UK laws’ - lovely.

Then 6 hours in a coach back to Wales. Fun. I loved the holiday, possibly the best time I’ve ever had abroad, but I didn’t love the travelling.

I fly out to Morocco tomorrow. This will be the last post I make before I come back, and then after that there will be loads and loads of photos.

Basically, any emails sent to me from now on will be delayed two weeks in getting a response, there is an autoresponder on my account; so there should be little confusion.

I leave home at 8 in the morning, and I think I’ll be in Morocco by about 8pm. We’re flying from Heathrow, with whom I can’t remember.

I guess all that remains to be said is bye, I’ll make up for the lack of posts when I get home, I promise.

In 5 days, I’ll be flying out to Morocco. Everything is set now, all the kit is ready, and I’m really, really looking forward to it. I’ve got my camera sorted out, and I’m expecting to have LOADS of pictures when I come back on the 15th. I’m still trying to decide how to make sure GPearce and my other sites stay safe, I’ll probably just lock them down - it’s not like their vulnerable anyhow.

I’d been thinking of setting up some scheduled posts while I’m away, I’ve got some pretty good ideas for that and they could well be interesting. I’m adding a special bit of code to my blog so it shows people that I’m away, although I’ve not decided how to do it so it doesn’t change my page summaries on search engines. I’ll probably put it in the sidebar, thinking about it.

That’s an idea for a new plugin, something which automatically adds a bit of code to your template while you’re away, so that people know. I’ll have to look into that ;)

But yeah, I’m really looking forwards to this, and I hope nobody ruins it for me to come back to by messing with my sites :)