Our flight was delayed thanks to Royal Air Babouche (Maroc) sitting for 2hrs at the gate with one nervous but excited 12yr old was a little tiresome but finally we saw it in the fog, disembarking passengers and finally we got on board! A Moroccan guy put his bag in the overhead locker and with it brought down the lighting strip, he couldn't put it back up, neither could the cabin crew who then went off and got a plaster to hold it into place!
Our arrival in Casablanca was fairly straightforward and luckily 20degrees! Checking that our transit status was OK, we headed through to immigration and out the other side to the station. A massive queue at the ticket office, lots of pushing & shoving and Dani was wide eyed with all the goings on. I heard the train arrive, no closer to the ticket office and decided to jump on the train minus a ticket. Somehow we found our way into 1st class and met 2 lovely Moroccan men who said we'd done the best thing as getting a ticket before the train left would have been impossible. Arriving at Casa Voyageurs station, we went out, got hassled by petit taxi drivers who wanted 30-40Dh for a fare to the Hassan II Mosque, we continued on and walked across the square to find a taxi who would put his meter on and arriving at the mosque we paid 8Dh for the fare!!!
Dani's first time in Africa, she was stunned by the mosque, the people and the mad tendancies of driving. We caught another taxi up to the Grand Marche and found a restaurant to eat in, she tried the a la menthe but preferred coke. A couple of pastilla & brochettes later we paid the bill and went for a walk before finding another taxi to take us back to the station and the train for the airport.
Our taxi already had one lady in it who was quite happy to share with us, within minutes we hit a man on a bicycle - well, he rode his bike into our taxi. He came and yelled at the driver, heated Arabic was exchanged and we drove off with the 4 of us laughing, the next lights were red, and our cyclist caught up with us, still yelling and then like on a suicide mission rode his bike across the traffic - we almost cried with laughter! We drove past him again at speed, smiled and waved goodbye whilst he was still yelling obscenities at our driver!!!
Getting back to the airport we went back through immigration who took forever to put someone on the desk and met up with a half French/Ivoirian family who'd been on our flight from Toulouse. Again our flight was delayed, we went off to the bathroom and I got out all our euros in cash gave Dani a third of them, then we both sat in cubicles stuffing them in our various hiding places. Leaving the bathrooms the gate area was empty. Panic hit - the flight had gone???? The gate number was still the same on the board but the delayed message had gone. I found a member of staff who assured me it hadn't gone but was at Gate 28 which then had me running around the airport trying to find 28, which was obscured downstairs. We waited another hour there and finally got on board.
Another hour or so on board, we were still on the tarmac everyone was in high spirits but a little annoyed that we'd not left. Finally a Lebanese lady with her 5 children got on board and caused chaos moving everyone out of their seats as she wasn't happy with her seat numbers. We roared down the runway with everyone clapping thrilled to have finally left at 11.40pm, 2.5hrs late!
