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This is our fourth tour with Senior Discovery, and we have high hopes that it will live up to our first 2 wonderful experiences and outshine our less-than-stellar Ireland tour experience this past May.

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Our trip began on October 1st with a 6 a.m. airport shuttle ride from our door to Vancouver airport for a long 2-stage flight: first from Vancouver to Montreal, where we’ll join our group and meet our tour manager Monica, and then from Montreal to Casablanca. This Senior Discovery group is the largest we’ve travelled with yet: 39 participants, plus Monica, a driver, and a Moroccan guide. Our fellow travellers hail from all across Canada, from West Vancouver to Halifax, and – unusually – we also have one person from San Clemente California!

🐪 🐫 🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐪 🐫🐪 🐫🐪 🐫

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We arrived in Casablanca more than 24 “clock hours” after leaving home, and are now 8 time zones ahead of Vancouver. Our first priority on arrival was exchanging Euros for Moroccan Dirham at a booth in the airport. Lunches are not included in our tour, and we don’t expect that independent eateries here will accept credit cards, so some cash is necessary. Plus, there will be markets in each medina (old city), where purchases of sweets like Turkish delight and fresh and dried fruits will no doubt tempt us. 200 Euros, after exchange fees, got us 1971 Dirham, which hopefully will be enough. There are ATM machines if it’s not.

There have been a couple of glitches already. What a start to tour director Monica’s first ever professional guiding experience – talk about trial by fire! First, one member of our tour realized – after clearing Moroccan customs – that she had left her purse on the plane. Fortunately, she had both her passport and her adult grandson along on this trip. Trying to get permission to go back to the plane to search delayed our departure from the airport by nearly an hour, but in the end, after being told to fill in a lost property form and hope for the best, the purse was found.

The “purse incident” gave all of us plenty of time to exchange money, but also meant that folks started to drift. Monica is soon going to learn all about cat herding!

Next was the 45 minute bus ride to the first of the 10 hotels in which we’ll overnight during our 14 days travelling all around the country. The drive reminded us a bit of Saudi Arabia: really wide roads, with lane markings that seem to be mostly suggestions, and lots of honking in lieu of signal lights. I’m glad it’s not us driving!

Casablanca, Dar al-Bayda in Arabic, means “white house”, and not surprisingly most of the buildings are made of concrete block coated with a layer of smooth white plaster. The route from the airport to the hotel is not particularly picturesque, with the exception of a few art deco style buildings, but once we were into the affluent centre of town it began to look like any other world financial centre – except with palm trees and sand!

Our accommodation and dinner venue tonight is the Kenzi Tower Hotel. This is the only “high rise” hotel on our itinerary, and the hotel’s website prominently notes that it is built to stringent seismic standards. I don’t know if that notice has always been there, but it clearly shows they are aware that guests are especially concerned after the recent earthquake. Compared to the 5 and 6 storey buildings that comprise most of the city, the 28 story Kenzi Tower and its twin office tower next door are Morocco’s version of New York City’s former iconic twin towers.

After 11 hours of flying time, and not much in the way of food, we were pleased that a delicious buffet breakfast was still waiting for us, even though it was almost 10 a.m. by the time we got to the hotel. Plus… coffee! Turbulence during our flights meant that no hot beverages were served, and Ted and I were both desperate for caffeine, as well as feeling a bit dehydrated. On that note, we’ve been told not to drink the tap water; Moroccans are used to it, but it can cause all kinds of problems for tourists.

Hotels here require each guest to show their passport, with their entry/exit stamp. Since we’re a group tour, it’s Monica’s task to check us all in, which meant collecting all our passports to take to reception. I’m not sure it should really be called a glitch, but the lack of a logical process for matching up the stack of returned passports with the stack of envelopes containing room keycards was painful to watch – especially since we were all exhausted and a bit cranky after our long travel day. Ted, and all my friends, know that I was dying to take over the process; to be honest, even Ted was ready to organize it!

We’d been told this was a 5 star hotel, but nonetheless our huge 5th floor room with its open plan sitting area, and the magnificent bathroom, wowed us. Our guide assured is that we’d be staying in gorgeous properties. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

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There were no events planned for today except for our welcome dinner, so we napped the afternoon away.

Our first dinner in Morocco featured lots of local dishes, but unfortunately everything was either cold (intentionally) or lukewarm (a function of the buffet style service), which did not highlight the spices or flavours. We’re looking forward to more formal plated dinner services on subsequently nights.

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Tomorrow the “real” touring begins, with city tours of Casablanca and Rabat, the Hassan II Mosque, and a casual lunch on one of Morocco’s beautiful Atlantic beaches.