Marrakech, An African Adventure

With the low cost airlines suddenly opening up exciting new routes beyond Europe and with reasonable, if not absolutely bargain prices, the time was right to travel a little further beyond our normal boundaries and we choose Marrakech in Morocco in North Africa. Neither of us had been to the continent of Africa before so this was going to be a whole new experience.

We travelled with Easyjet on a three and a half hour flight and close to our destination flew through a magnificent sunset which exaggerated the colours of the brown arid land and bathed Marrakech below us with a warm orange glow. The plane landed at the Menara airport, close to the city, at half past six where it was already dark but the temperature was close to 30º centigrade and a warm breeze greeted us as we stepped out of the aircraft and onto the tarmac.

There was a lot of congestion at passport control and an entry form to fill in which was probably the worst designed official form that I have ever encountered. Despite dealing with three incoming flights and all this bureaucratic nonsense the queues actually went down very quickly and when it was out turn to be processed we were given our unique identity number which was theatrically stamped into our passports and waved through to where a supervisor checked them for a second time presumably to make sure it had been done properly by the first official.

Before travelling I had read some advice that said watch out for taxi drivers who will gladly overcharge unsuspecting tourists. That is no different from anywhere else in the world of course but I was mindful of that so took the second piece of advice which said when arriving for the first time it was advisable to take a pre-booked shuttle service because finding places can be difficult at the first attempt and especially in the dark. At €32 it was a bit expensive but our driver was waiting for us as promised in the arrivals hall and he quickly loaded our bags and set off for the city just four or five kilometres away.

The traffic was mad and so was the driver as he carved his way through the rush hour traffic coping brilliantly with the ludicrous French driving rule of priorité à droite where vehicles from the right always have priority at junctions and roundabouts and which was evidently still the norm here even though the French themselves have seen the sense of virtually abandoning it in their own country. There was no lane discipline that I could make out and the ten minute journey was one extended game of ‘chance’ where drivers simply waited to see whose nerve would fold and who would yield first. We flashed past motorbikes and donkeys pulling wooden carts, pushbikes and pedestrians and at one point even encountered a camel train.

The route into the city took us past the famous Hôtel Mamounia where amongst others Winston Churchill and Mick Jagger used to like to stay. Churchill came for the painting and Jagger for the drugs! Then through the bus station which was heaving with early evening activity before stopping abruptly in an unpromising looking place on the Rue Sidi Mamoun where the driver unloaded the bags and invited us to follow him.

He took us through a gate into a busy road with small shops on one side and a high wall on the other that turned out to be Royal Palace of King Mohammed VI which is where he stays when he visits Marrakech. Suddenly he darted into a side road, no more than an alley really with an uneven surface with houses and shops along one side, then through a dog-leg turn and into a narrower lane and by now we were glad that we had taken the shuttle bus option because we would never have found this place by ourselves that’s for sure.

Greece 2010, Ixia

After four consecutive years island hopping in the Cyclades this year it was time for a change. Not because we are tired of this picturesque ring of islands and not because we were robbed in Athens last year on the way home but mainly because the flight schedules had changed and there was no Luton to Athens option this year. Instead we found cheap flights from Liverpool to Rhodes for just £82 each return which were too good to miss so we agreed that this year we would visit the Dodecanese islands instead.

The drive to Liverpool was a long one and as it was bank holiday weekend and not having made this journey before we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there for the early afternoon flight. As it turned out the journey was especially straight-forward and we arrived in Liverpool with more spare time than we really needed. The only minor hitch was with the car parking because although I had booked a space in advance the car park was full so the attendant had to make alternative arrangements which luckily for us included an upgrade to a short stay car park right outside departures. The car park charge for fourteen nights was a very reasonable £48 but a friend of mine, from Liverpool himself, said that he thought this was because although I had booked fourteen nights I was only being charged for two because after that the car would most likely be stolen!

We now had three hours to wait for the flight and I felt as though I was in a different country already. We usually fly from Stansted so are used to the familiar voices of Essex whine or the home counties la-di-da but here we were surrounded by Manchester accents as brittle as a frozen dime bar and the unmistakable adenoidal scouse.

The flight was almost on time, which is unusual for Easyjet but as soon as we were all on board the cabin crew announced the inevitable thirty minute delay. There were some moans and groans around the cabin but then something unusual happened. I know Liverpool is the home of comedy but I didn’t expect the captain of the plane to come out of the cockpit and do a fifteen minute stand up routine! At first most people were a bit unsure just what was going on but after a while everyone relaxed and he had everyone chuckling and giggling with a sequence of well rehearsed gags about delays and routings which settled everyone down. Eventually we were off and thanks to a strong tail wind we still arrived on the island of Rhodes well ahead of schedule.

Although it was nine o’clock when we arrived it was still hot so we were anxious to get to our hotel and change. Because we had wanted to avoid the hold luggage charges this year we were attempting a two week holiday with hand luggage only so we were quickly through passport control which was just as slack as I remembered it from previous visits to Greece and into a taxi for the short drive to Ixia just a few kilometres away. Generally speaking I don’t like using cabs because most taxi drivers in Greece are highway robbers but at least on Rhodes the prices are fixed by the city council so at €17 for the short journey at least we knew we were being officially ripped off.

The Caravel Hotel apartments were along a side street off the busy main strip of Ixia and didn’t look too promising at first and I began to fear the worst when we were allocated the Orwellian sounding room 101 and I wondered what terrors might be behind the door. Actually although it overlooked a car park and was within close ear shot of a karaoke bar it was a very nice room indeed, spotlessly clean, generously spacious and with refreshing white linen on the beds.

And things got even better when we were invited to eat in the dining room and take advantage of a hotel guest’s 15% discount and already I was beginning to like this place more and more. The food turned out to be excellent and we had a window seat in the dining room and ate Greek specialities and drank house wine and Mythos and both agreed that actually we had made a very good choice indeed.

We watched the holiday makers promenading back and forth and we began to realise that this year was most likely going to be different in another sense because Rhodes is just the sort of airport island that we have recently being trying to avoid and there were a lot of people in lycra and football shirts wandering from one big screen sky sports bar to the next looking for English beer and food served with tomato sauce! We were only here for two nights so this didn’t really matter a great deal so after our meal we went back to our room and sat out on the balcony until quite late playing cards, chatting and listening to musical crimes being commited as one by one classic songs were being murdered in the karaoke bar.

Thumbs Down For Easyjet (again)!

The next morning over another excellent breakfast on the terrace a rumour started percolating through that an incoming Easyjet flight had been cancelled so obviously wouldn’t be going back to the UK either. Doris thought it might be the Gatwick flight but she wasn’t entirely certain so we started to think about what we might do if it was our flight to Stansted.

We left the hotel and abandoned a planned short detour for a panoramic view of Dubrovnik and went directly to the airport in case there was going to be any trouble. After returning the car and signing the rental papers we walked to airport departures and sure enough there was a problem and passengers were wandering about trying to make alternative plans. Thankfully the flight information screen confirmed it was the Gatwick flight but as you can never be absolutely sure about the reliability of Easyjet I refused to stop worrying completely.

Easyjet are one of the worst airlines for last minute cancellations and changes to the flight itineraries and we have been the victims of this before. In September 2006 a four hour delay from Athens because somewhere in the day the plane had to squeeze in an extra flight, in 2007 again from Athens an unexplained two hour delay and in 2010 a three hour delay from Bilbao again because of last minute rescheduling. Easyjet seem to think that this is acceptable and that passengers can be treated like cattle (but actually cattle probably get more consideration than Easyjet passengers!). Although everyone likes to hate Ryanair I have never experienced major flight delays or arrogance and contempt at which Easyjet excel and would always use them when I can in preference to Easyjet simply because I have more confidence in them to get me where I am going more or less on time.

Anyway, the reason for this morning’s last minute cancellation was apparently because the pilot had phoned in sick. Now I don’t know how many Easyjet flights there are every day or how many pilots they must have on the books but that excuse seems a bit lame to me because surely someone must have been on standby or there was a spare floating around the system somewhere. When a refuse truck driver doesn’t turn up for work the council doesn’t cancel the day’s collections they find someone to take his place so that service isn’t interrupted. Surely Easyjet can do the same, I know they operate on narrow margins but flight disruption because a pilot has got a bit of a headache is ridiculous.

Naturally there was a lot of confusion and long queues as the Gatwick passengers tried to get information and make alternative arrangements. To be fair to Easyjet they promised a replacement flight the following evening, all expense paid overnight accommodation and an extra day in Croatia and if I had been on the flight I would have taken that offer and had another day in the sun but this didn’t seem to suit many of the grounded passengers and most were queuing to arrange transfers.

The lucky ones who were there first had managed to get a seat on our Stansted flight but the next batch were transferred to Liverpool. Now, I’m not convinced that a lot of these people from Surrey really knew where Liverpool is because after a four hour wait at Dubrovnik Airport they were going to land two hundred and fifty miles away from their preferred destination, they wouldn’t be able to understand the language and then they would have a tortuous journey to Gatwick.

By road Liverpool to Gatwick would be a nightmare down the M6, the M42, the M40 and finally the M25 and that is probably the last thing anybody would really want after a relaxing break in the sun. Alternatively they could go by train but this takes at least three and a half hours and the cheapest single ticket is over £70 each. The decision to transfer to Liverpool just didn’t make sense to me, some explained that they had to get back to work the next day but they couldn’t have been thinking straight. Even if they managed to get back in time to go to work they were going to feel like shit and would probably have to phone in sick anyway.

Luckily our flight wasn’t affected but as usual it was over half an hour late taking off and all of this simply confirmed for me that I really do prefer Ryanair.

Croatia, Cavtat

As usual the Easyjet flight was late taking off and also arriving so added to its statistic on late or delayed flights that Michael O’Leary delights in gloating over when he provides benchmark statistics in the Ryanair in-flight magazine each month. Easyjet are frustratingly relaxed about flight times and I think on the whole I prefer the Ryanair approach.

There wasn’t a great deal to see for the first part of the flight because of cloud but we saw the snow capped peaks of the Alps poking through the mist and shortly after crossing Venice the vapours cleared and we had a clear view of the coast of Croatia and the string of islands separated from the main land by a vivid blue Adriatic Sea. As the plane flew south we picked out familiar places, Trogir, Primosten, Split and islands that we recognised, Hvar and Korcula, but this time from an unfamiliar perspective because for the last two years these were places that we had only seen from ground level as we had driven south from Zadar. This time we could appreciate the islands with their halos of golden sand, the blue sea and the salt and pepper grey mountains that rise dramatically behind the narrow coastal strip. As the plane descended we flew low over the old town of Dubrovnik and picked out the iconic red roofs, the city walls and the boats in the harbour.

Within seconds the plane was touching down and after a short wait we were in welcome sunshine as we walked to the terminal building to be processed at the passport control desk. It was a nice modern airport, clean and airy and after we passed through we found the car hire desk where we were upgraded from a small to a medium car for no additional cost. We were planning to drive to Montenegro and the Government Foreign Office website warns that driving can be difficult there with poor roads and temperamental drivers so on this occasion I agreed to pay the additional €6 a day for the fully comprehensive insurance.

After we had completed the paperwork and signed up we maneuvered out of the impossibly tight parking space in the parking lot and drove the short distance to the resort of Cavtat. I paid careful attention to the road and Kim worked out the air conditioning controls and air flow combinations because it was very, very hot indeed. It only took a few minutes to arrive in the small town and find a car park and then, after a quick change of clothes into something more appropriate for 28º of sunshine rather than a chilly morning in Stansted we walked around the harbour and slipped immediately into holiday mode.

Cavtat was delightful and because Croatia insists on a compressed holiday season of two months in July and August, and except for being directly below the flight path of landing planes, it was quiet and peaceful. In the harbour there were a pot-pourri of working boats, pleasure cruisers and some very expensive sailing boats and yachts so we picked a restaurant with a good view and enjoyed a simple lunch and a first Croatian beer called Ožujsko. It was good.

After lunch we walked around the little town through narrow leafy lanes and cobbled streets flanked with traditional red-roofed brownstone houses climbing back from the blue of the waterfront up narrow stairways smothered in clouds of white, mauve and pink blossom and every now and then a private shaded courtyard to investigate. Along the front there were busy cafés and tourist shops and the waiters and the shopkeepers allowed us to browse slowly without pestering for custom as they do in other parts of Europe.

It was early afternoon and getting hotter so it was time to leave and continue our journey towards the nearby village of Mlini where we would be staying for a couple of nights. I got us tangled up in the one way system and took the long route out of town that twisted along the coast and then climbed through green hills with contrasting yellow broom and scarlet poppies back to the main road and headed north.