My Second Moroccan Holiday - Day Eight - Going Home

 Monday October 23rd

  We 'broke new ground' when we discovered where the breakfast hall was in the hotel, and also found that we could pay 50 Dirhams apiece on the spot for a much better breakfast in a much nicer ambience than the one we might have bought if we had taken the walk out of the hotel, and gone down the street. The hotel did a self service buffet of different breads and pastries with a varied selection of jams and spreads to accompany them. They also presented a choice of tea, coffee, and orange juice, which tasted as if it was freshly squeezed. Anthony secreted several pastries in one of his deeper and cleaner pockets for lunch, later. For not having slept so well I did not think as clearly as he did, to take advantage of the self service character of the buffet.

  Back in the room, post breakfast, it was 'tidy up, make sure you have left nothing out or behind, and leave the suitcase and hand luggage' time. Anthony had to buy herbs at the market because the herbs and spices in Morocco are so much fresher than their equivalents back home, whether home was France or County Down. I had around 400 Dirhams in me, and they were no use outside Morocco so we had to spend them now. There were about three stalls open in the whole market, every thing else was shuttered and closed. The three stalls that were open were herb and spice stalls. After a little indecision we got the best selection of spices we were going to get. I still had 200 Dirhams on me, Anthony was itching to spend them and I looked at the postcards that were for sale in what was otherwise a silversmith's shop. 

  One thing I am never sure about is when salesmen engage with the targets of their sales pitches how conscious are they of the theatricality of their sales pitch? How aware are they that the boundaries and roles of the situation are artifice, artificial and there is a degree to which, if we both chose to acknowledge it, the contact between two people could be played out in a much calmer way? The silversmith was either a very good actor or absolutely desperate to sell what looked to be very good wares. So for 200 Dirhams Anthony bought a silver bracelet from the silversmith where with all the dramatic salesmanship the silversmith employed to get Anthony to buy the bracelet, the bracelet was surely worth 800 or a 1000 Dirham. And maybe the display of dramatics in salesmanship was worth paying something for as well.

  I still wonder if by having so little cash on me I cheated the silversmith. Something about the scene still does not read right with me. If he was in a conversation with Anthony and me, then as he kept dropping the price, not knowing how little we had, the more he lowered the price the more it felt more like he was talking to himself and were meant to be witnesses to his diminishing grasp on reality. He got his 200 Dirhams, though. Back at the Hotel Kamal we took our luggage, rugs and all, to the car. Having given the silversmith all our Dirhams, all I had left were Euros. Anthony paid the doorman as we left with a 10 Euro note. We were out to the car hire office and their driver was booked to use the car for our last journey, to the airport in plenty of time. But Anthony and I have always had a different sense of time with travel. I like to give myself plenty of time ahead in airports, train stations and bus stations, and he likes to have less time in such places, where we meet is that we both know that they are good places to read and ignore the bustle for journeys other than the one we want to take.

 The driver the car hire company offered us was hired because he knew the most direct route to the airport. Anthony sat on the front passenger seat, I accepted a back seat. I enjoyed seeing areas of Agadir that I would not have expected to see, seeing these places was part of the premium of being a back seat passenger. Even when many of the sights I saw could be described as 'urban sprawl', they left me intrigued. Our arrival at the airport seemed sudden, even with all the clear road signs that long in advance clearly signalled where we were going. With travel, time will play tricks on us, and each trick has to seem fresh for it to work.

  I was relieved that we had more time than we thought we needed in the airport. Anthony had been unable to print his boarding pass for the journey before we left home. He did not know what the wrinkle with the form was but the boarding pass download simply would not download. So he had to go three desks and explain how he tried to print his boarding pass, but to no avail. The best help he got was directions from one of the many policemen in the airport. Anthony's persistence won out in the end and we went through security. Again, his luggage caused more delays. He had left a small pair of scissors fit only for cutting paper with in his suitcase, on the upside this meant that security were not interested in the large tub of yoghurt that was in his is hand luggage, which we could then take home.

  Sitting and reading kept us calm up to a point, after all the 'duty free' shops in Agadir airport were full of tat that you'd be appalled to be seen carrying with you. But then there was knowing when to move to the departure gate and guessing how long we might have to wait there. It all clarified slowly. First the many people formed queues because they thought they ought to then some staff appeared and they were absorbed by the screens behind the desks that were their stations. Then there were announcements and the queue was a buzz with the expectation of movement. From being in the position of being part of it, expecting to board the plane for Toulouse, I could not be objective about how the sense of time felt vs what it might have looked like and been measured as, by somebody looking at it with hindsight. The sense of time passengers have with airport queues defies analysis unless you are an airport manager. I have no idea how airport managers form over-views of the passengers they process.

  The flight was calm and ordered, I made notes about the days, rather than read. Being sat nearer the back then Anthony was, I was slower than him to get through Toulouse Blagnac Airport. It felt good to be within reach of home, But on leaving the airport we were still several hours from home and bed. The car was parked on a side street that was about four stops away on the relief bus out of the airport that was running because at present the tram was shut down.     

   Everything went smoothly, The car started at the second attempt. We were soon whizzing round the ring road that went around Toulouse, and found the junction that would get us to the toll motorway that would take us towards home. The evening skies either side of the motorway were rather dramatic but we were travelling at speed so whilst I could have my fantasy of taking a picture of that sunset, the memory of wanting to take the picture was the nearest I would get to it. Anthony had his five euro not ready for the machine when we got to the exit point, so we were calm getting off the motorway. Soon the colours muted. It was not dark yet, but it was getting there. Anthony dislikes driving in the dark, so it seemed to be a mix of good planning and good luck that we got home with enough light in the sky for his liking, at 7.30 or 8 pm. 

  We had a light meal of salad and leftovers from the fridge that was surprisingly good. The end of  very good holiday.  

My Second Moroccan Holiday - Day Seven - Return To Agadir

Sunday 22nd October 2023

  From the start, the day felt more like the holiday drawing to an end. The German/French couple had checked before we presented ourselves for breakfast, which seemed to be served inattentively. But the sun was out and our plans seemed simple, get some money from the hole in the the wall, pay the hotel for the room and the meals, buy some spices to take home and some pastries for lunch, pack the car with all we have with us, and get on the road to Agadir. 

  There was a queue at the hole in the wall. So I watched whilst I waited. The people ahead of me were a group of men and women from either New Zealand or Australia. There were about six of them. One by one they approached the machine to get some money and one by one the machine refused the cards of five out of the six of them. Cue minor whinges and criticisms of each other before they left not knowing what to do next on a Sunday with nothing open, whilst having no money. Whilst the tourists were not getting their money I watched as two doors down from the hole in the wall a stray dog was taking flat breads from a pile outside a bakers, and, one by one, eating most of the flat breads he took, leaving an edge of the bread on the pavement. I had tried in this visit to keep an eye out for the street dogs whilst I was in Tafraout, and this was the best viewing of any dog I had yet seen. 

  There was also a young beggar who I had no small change for, when I knew that Anthony always gave such people something to them whether he was in his now native France or as a visitor in Morocco. I got my 1000 Dirhams out of the hole in the wall and returned to the hotel to settle the bill. It was then that Anthony asked the proprietor, a cook, about the best place to buy spices. We went and of course it being Sunday morning they were not open until the afternoon when we were going to be halfway towards Agadir. We realised that we should have made the purchase the precious afternoon when we spent time looking around the small market for maybe the third time.

  Room emptied, car packed, and room checked twice again to make sure we had not left anything behind, on the way to the car Anthony met the young beggar I met earlier and gave him some loose change, which pleased him no end. I don't know why I got into a mental block about giving small amounts of money, money which meant little to me, to the poor of Morocco who seemed delighted with any notice being taken of them on their terms. I would give back home. Somehow I could not sort my head out over such simple generosity away from home and in a different currency. I observe this, Anthony made up for what I lacked.

  On the road to Agadir there was further opportunities for generosity. We picked up one man seeking a lift of alas only about twenty minutes length. But he was standing at the side of a misty road in the heights of the Anti-Atlas mountains where the clouds met the road we drove through the clouds, and we had seen no other car pass us for at least half an hour. 

  When we stopped for a break from Anthony driving, and to eat the pastries he bought from the bakery earlier whilst he was looking for spices to take home, the place we chose had to be photogenic spot. Taking pictures was part of the pleasure of the holiday. There were so many places to stop and so many sites that seemed photogenic that part of the pleasure was being being spoilt for the choice of where to stop. One factor that encouraged a sense of 'enjoy it whilst it is there' was that we knew that eventually we would be coming into huge and unphotogenic Agadir, where if we knew that we were on the right road for the Hotel Kamal we might be surprised. One of the weather effects I could not stop myself liking was the mix of sharp and soft outlines of

peaks where the clouds covered some    peaks

but did not cover other peaks, I had admired this effect  from a distance at home when I saw the Mountains of Mourne in County Down. Even if the effect looked the same the world over, with every mountain range in the world, I'd still be pleased by the sight of that effect.

  Lunch, and our last photography break over, we descended from the mountains to where the road flattened out. Apart from some small settlements and the odd rather 'sculptural' looking dead tree which would not have lent itself to the good photograph we wanted, the scenery became mundane.

  We crept upon outer Agadir through the many smaller towns that Agadir's expansion and development had swallowed up, such that we could not tell where one small town ended and another began, or when we were in Agadir proper. The weather turned grey and wet, this further added to the sense of us passing run a series of down places. The signage on the duel carriage ways was good. It was because the signage was as good as it was that over the two hours or so that we took to get through the joined up small towns into central Agadir we did not have to turn around, or reverse-though with the big roundabouts we often went around twice, sometimes three times, to make sure we found the right exit for the next roundabout. I remember for the briefest second seeing a dig curled up, looking contented and apparently asleep, on one round as we came off one exit and on to the roundabout. 

  Between the good road signing, and what seemed to me like travelling by dead reckoning we found our destination, the Hotel Kamal, much sooner than the staff there expected of us. We rolled up to sign in to our rooms and rest before 4 pm.

  Rested, showered, and refreshed, and our notes on the journey up to date, we set out to walk, partly for some fresh air, partly to find a hole in the wall, and partly to find a restaurant since we did not know the procedure for eating in the hotel. At the hole in the wall I got out 400 Dirhams, that was what Anthony said we would need on top of what was in my wallet. When looking at where to eat, the stand out choice was an Italian restaurant, not that we saw a menu or saw what it cost. But we had been eating Moroccan all week and the only other nationality of food on offer was Japanese. We saw a menu and it did not inspire us.

Me in my handmade 'Mondrian' T shirt 

  When we rolled up at the Italian restaurant we were quite hungry and tired. The presentation was rather posh, stiff white linen napkins. It seemed like a good start when we saw on the menu that we could have a beer. The rest of the menu was more opaque there were items that were listed as salads, but that could mean something light, small and tasty or, well, what arrived in the end. I ordered a salad for starter and a main course of roast aubergine and ravioli. When the salad arrived it was huge and delicious, there were medallions of roast beef in it, and a whole large avocado sliced finely. The dressing was very rich but it did not overwhelm the taste of the lettuce, tomatoes, and other ingredients over which I felt it was my duty to take my time. The way I had been brought up with food excluded eating at restaurants, but made eating at home and pleasing the maker of the meal happy by presenting an empty plate for the washing up, which as a teenager I would pressed into helping with. This salad was seriously sumptuous, and it was added to by Anthony, who had a similarly full plate, giving me the large prawns that he decided he did not want.

  If we could have changed the order and said

Anthony in Moroccan djellaba  

 to the waiter when the salad arrived 'Please, can we cancel the ravioli, these salads are big enough to be a main course?' It would have been a good thing to have done, if only for our stomachs. But we accepted that the main course had to arrive. I enjoyed my ravioli, mostly by eating it slowly, and we both had a second beer. Eating out like this was a major occasion. We rested and said 'No Thank you' to coffee or any of the small puddings in the list.

   When the bill arrives it was obvious to us that we had not calculated the costs of the meal before we ate very well. The bill came to something over 500 Dirhams, I worked it out to be the equivalent of about £45. We were not expecting that. It was lucky for us that they took credit cards, and that I had mine on me. 

   That night I slept poorly, I could not find my medication for helping me sleep and I was afraid of my snoring, not knowing I was snoring, and waking Anthony up.