First Impressions

The key I believe is not to have any after such a long journey. Twenty-three hours from my door in Ventura to my room at the Hotel Ibis Moussafir in Casablanca. That was about thirty hours of waky-waky time. I slept from about the Great Lakes to about south of Iceland, according to the little screen in the seat in front of me. I don't know why I keep that on the screen; it seems to show how painfully long the trip is and projects how much more sleep I am going to miss. Still I prefer that as entertainment to the Michael Bay crap on one of the movie channels.

Sitting in a numb stupor in the hotel restaurant, I am eating a simple tajine of lamb and egg, mopping it up with a surprisingly crisp baguette. Want to stay up at least until 11 to fight off jet-lag. Contemplating some interesting bits from the last day:

• The British Airways 747 is only about half economy class. The rest is First and Business with all these bed-like seats. Very cool and how much?
• Even with renovations, London Heathrow still sucks. Too crowded and they really push the shopping on you. It's a damn mall with an airport incidentally attached.
• The baggage claim area in Casablanca was huge and apparently appropriately so- there were pile of bags and luggage neatly stacked everywhere. As I waited for my bags, I looked closer in and realized that alot of the bags had just blankets in them. But who owned these hundreds of bags? Not in Kansas any more...
• The train from the airport to Downtown Casablanca was pretty third-worldy ( I guess I should refrain from such perjoratives) but it was kind of dirty and jittery and I was being tired and bitchy...
• Cell phones are just as ubiquitous here except that they play bad arabic pop songs instead of bad anerican ones.
• I am now able to offer up a theory about the piles of luggage at the airport. The Hajj, the great annual pilgrimage to Mecca ended about a week ago. Millions attend ( a good Muslim is required to go as it is one of the Five Pillars of Islam) and sleep in tent cities. So that is probably why all the blankets. But I still can't figure out why their owners aren't there.

Guess I'll sleep on it. Tomorrow, it's on to Fes.