May 15, 2025
Ollie was the first one up this morning and shockingly figured out how to use the TV, navigate a foreign Netflix account and start the second Harry Potter movie. Normally we would have put up at least a small protest to this type of morning start, but we still had laundry and organizing to do before we checked out of our AirBnB so we let it slide. Len soon also woke up and demanded Peppa Pig, but eventually decided any morning TV was better than no TV so he gave in to Harry Potter.
Our Mauritius travel mishap shortened our time in London by a day, but even if it had all gone smoothly, it would have been nice to spend more time in London. There are so many museums and activities we would have loved to do with the kids and the time in a familiar feeling city has been energizing for us all. Also, having an apartment again with full kitchen and laundry has been lovely.
Unfortunately, there were some electricity issues with the laundry area of the apartment and our last load of laundry failed to dry completely. With a 90 minute drive to Stansted airport looming, we put the damp clothes into a plastic bag and were on our way.
Without fully knowing what is was or meant, Kyle booked “Fast Track” for our tickets from London to Marrakesh. It turned out to be similar to Clear or TSA PreCheck and we thankfully went to the front of the massive security line. It was a good move because it seemed like ~50% of passengers had bags flagged for something including most of ours. After a brief hold up and bag search, all of our stuff was deemed fine and we were on our way. By the time we grabbed lunch and snacks, we were then assigned a gate and on the move again. We flew RyanAir to Morocco and given that all of our luggage is carry-on (including some questionably sized backpacks as personal items), we wanted to line up early to ensure there was space in the overhead bins for our bags.
After our ~18 hour travel day from Mauritius to London, the 3.5 hour flight to Marrakesh went by in a blink. For the first time at passport control, the agent asked us what our jobs were. Kyle said, “uhhhh unemployed?” and though the agent seemed perturbed he still moved things along.
We booked our Morocco trip through a tour company and will be pretty heavily supported and handled during our time here. Abdul, our driver for the next 9 days, picked us up in a huge sprinter van equipped with Wifi, mini fridge for water and a basket of snacks. He also gifted us shoulder bags with our names written on them in Arabic. The boys immediately took to peppering their new friend with questions. Lenny led with, “Are those palm trees coconut trees?” Sadly they are not coconut palms but date palms. We had lots of dates in our snack basket and I’m hopeful we can turn the boys into date fans during our time here.
Our Riad is in the Old Medina so our huge sprinter van could only take us so far in the narrow, winding streets. Someone from the hotel came to meet us with a huge wagon/rickshaw to help with all of our bags and show us to the Riad tucked away in town. The boys had a ton of pent up energy from travel day and quickly took to fighting and wrestling in the lobby. We barely had energy to ask them to stop and the hotel agent kept telling us to ignore them anyway and leave them to it.
The swimming pool is literally one step outside of our room door, tempting the boys the moment we first saw our room. Many other rooms encircle the pool given the Riad design, so I doubt our usual running/throwing/jumping and splashing will be as welcome. We opted to eat dinner in our room instead of in the restaurant as we were all wiped and hoped to eat and get to sleep as quickly as possible. The kids lost TV selection rights at some point during the day, so we watched an episode of Seinfeld and then went to bed and the kids were asleep in just a few minutes.
