At home and abroad

At the end of my last post, I noted that our flight for Marrakech was at 6:10. What I did not know then was that it was at 6:10 a.m., and when I typed those words it had already left. So Steve and I strolled, care-free, from Olivia’s apartment to the Grande Jatte, the island in the Seine painted most famously by pointillist George Seurat. Later, we sipped our cafe cremes in a leisurely manner, and still later we walked with Olivia in the Bois de Boulogne. We were feeling almost cocky when we got on the airport bus with what we thought was plenty of time and arrived at what we thought was 2.5 hours early. We even had another coffee in the airport before checking the Departures board and feeling our stomachs drop.

Instantly, it was clear there were no 6:10 PM flights to Marrakech. Rather, the next flight would be at 6 Monday morning. I’m to blame for this error. The only way I can explain it is that when I made the reservations alll those months ago and saw EasyJet’s one flight per day to Marrakech, it never crossed my mind that the 6:10 could refer to that cold dark hour before dawn, rather than the cilivized end-of-the afternoon alternative.

Such is the price of living in a country that uses a 12-hour clock rather than the 24-hour one so common elsewhere. Given the magnitude of this mistake (MISSING the flight! By 9 hours?!!?), what happened next was not all that bad. We were able to secure 2 of the remaining 7 seats for the flight early tomorrow, and EasyJet only charged us the difference between the price we’d paid before and the last-minute tab. We were able to Skype our hotel in Marrakech and reschedule our pickup from the airport. We took the free airport bus the two stops to the hotel center, and we got a room at the Ibis Hotel for 97 euros. It’s clean and well-designed. The pizza and French beer in its restaurant was pretty good.

It may not be the most romantic place to spend our 40th anniversary. But things could be a lot worse.

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