Casablanca

The drive to Casablanca is long, and we’ve already driven it once this trip, so while Ria slept, we just bolted north. We got to the airport hotel at eight, and although I’d confirmed our reservation with a credit card and the web site had warned me that if I didn’t cancel before 7 p.m. my card would be charged, instead it was cancelled. The nice woman at the desk informed me that there were no rooms at this hotel, but she could get me a room in the chain’s location in downtown Casablanca. Well, Thom and I have done the in-city driving thing in Morocco, and I knew that it would take us more than an hour to find the place if we were lucky. I went out to the car and got Ria (who was well rested from her long nap in the car), and told her to pretend she was absolutely exhausted. Ria put her head on my shoulder and whimpered, and I explained to the woman that we’d driven in from Skoura and “la petite” was exhausted, and within 45 seconds she procured a key to a room for us. Ah, the advantages of traveling with a child.

Our hotel room generously included a sticker on the desk pointing the way to Mecca. I thought it was a nice touch, and noticed that underneath the sticker was another identical sticker, pointing in a very slightly different direction, no more than a couple of degrees off. I’m not sure if this was revisionism, or if the lower sticker had been marred in some way and its replacement not perfectly aligned.