The day I have been waiting for is finally here, we are in Morocco. An awfully early morning start for us with three Ubers ordered to pick us up at just after 7.00am to get us to a flight departing at 9.30am from Lisbon airport. I obviously don’t have a sports bet account as even though I thought I’d finalised a deal with an Uber driver I was outbid at the post which saw Robyn and I alone in a dark alleyway awaiting a Uber driver for a number of minutes. Fortunately Mandip arrived to rescue us from this feat worse than hell (not really) and so we made our way in what we thought was a reasonable time to make our flight,

So…. Lisbon airport. What you need to know is you have to travel significant distances to get to your gate, passport control is very slow as there are lots and lots of flights out of this airport and in our case we had to run to our flight and then sit on the tarmac for quite a bit of time on a bus to then be shuttled away to where our plane was sitting.

The flight itself was really good taking a little over an hour to get to Marrakech.

There were a few tense moments at passport control on our arrival into Marrakech with plenty of signage letting new arrivals know that they needed to have completed health forms (which we didn’t have), fortunately Australians weren’t required to fill this in, thank goodness as we didn’t have the form and there are no forms available at the airport to be completed. To be completely honest the whole arrival experience was a little nerve racking with very serious police officers manning the desks. I think I was very conscious that I knew no Arabic and that we were so obviously not local that the sternness of the officers did worry me a little.

But any misgivings I had about Morocco vanished as soon as we exited the terminal and were greeted by Adil from the Riad we were staying at. Adil drove us calmly through the very busy streets of Marrakech to our place of residence for the evening. I am sure that there are “rules of war” when using the roads the traffic is absolutely bonkers. While I could see no rhyme or reason to how the traffic worked as well as it did, it sure appeared that every motorist, motor cyclist and pedestrian had the rule book.

Stopping at the end of an alleyway we were greeted by one of the guys from the Riad Andallaspa – the street of our Riad isn’t wide enough for a car to use (doesn’t stop motorbikes) and so we had to wheel our bags down the cobblestoned road.

Just so there are no misunderstandings I seriously fell in love with the place from the moment we walked through the doors. We were made to feel so special given tea and snacks as we filled in our paperwork. The place is bright and oh so welcoming, it felt like I was being transported back in time but with wi-fi 😃.

We then had a little tour of the Riad to select our rooms.

Shortly after settling in, the wonderful Boujemaa (Bouj) from Marrakech walking tours arrived to take us on a two hour walking tour that went for three and a half hours. Bouj is a proud Moroccon, with exceptional knowledge of the city he so obviously loves.

Marrakech was founded way back in 1062 by Yusuf ibn Tashfin considered one of the most prominent leaders in Morocco.it has had many years of conflict with the Portuguese, Spaniards and French waging war over many centuries.

There were so many highlights to the tour walking through the souks, visiting the El-Fnaa Square – which is massive and incredibly busy, filled with artists, snake charmers and sellers of all kinds of things or walking through the back streets and alleys where he explained why the doors were configured the way they were. We also talked about structures of the medinas and homes within the Medina.

It is a magnificent city filled with truly warm and engaging people. Before going out on our tour we decided to have dinner at the Riad upstairs on the roof, well it was pretty special. The crew here are so attentive and they so want to ensure that you are enjoying the experience of staying with them they work really hard to meet and exceed your needs.

What a great day tomorrow we head towards the desert.