May 21, 2015: Surprise Trip to Morocco

I slept in late again today.  Feeling a little bit better but still have a bit of bronchitis.  Luciana came to get me up but climbed into bed and insisted on snuggling for twenty minutes before letting me get up.

It is cold again today.  We even saw light sprinkles, but no real rain.  Nothing like yesterday.  This meant the second day of the girls’ friends not coming to see them.  It is really sad that Liesl passed up a day with them as our time in Spain is getting to be very short at this point.

Today we realized that we have a three day weekend coming up and this was our last chance to possibly go to Morocco.  So we rapidly made plans to see if we could work it all out.  It took a lot of planning since we do not have enough car space for everyone to fit.  So we had to book a rental car from Granada for Rachel and Shawn and book a hotel in Tarifa, figure out the ferry, figure out the train from Tanger to Fes, book a hotel in Fes, etc.  A lot of work.

We are pretty excited, though.  None of the six of us have every been to Morocco or Africa at all and Rachel and Shawn have never even seen it as we have.  So today was really a crazy day and Dominica did so much work getting everything lined up for us.  She has the car rental all set.  She has the ferry figured out.  She found us a hostel in Tarifa so that we can head down there tomorrow night instead of trying to make it on Saturday morning.  She booked a riad (traditional Moroccan mansion) right in the Fes medina (old town.)  She has even worked out how the train and everything works.  So much work she put into this today.  It is just crazy.

But after everything, we are now going to get to actually see Morocco which had been our plan all along but after Rachel and Shawn were coming to stay with us for nearly a month we had figured that we would not be able to pull it all off and had kind of given up on trying to do it still.  But this really worked out perfectly (we hope) and we are super excited to be able to head down there tomorrow night.  How awesome.  This was the one, last, big thing that we really felt that it would be a shame to have not been able to do while living in Andalucia.  I would have felt like we had really missed an opportunity if we had not done it now, while we could.

So today, after work, we all tried to get some rest as Shawn, Rachel and I have to leave the house at just a little after noon tomorrow to get up to the Granada Airport where we are picking up the rental car.  Tomorrow is going to be a very long day with a lot of logistics to be handled.  And then, before the day is over, we have to drive two cars all of the way to Tarifa which is nearly a four hour drive!  Rachel will drive one and I will drive the other, later one.  Rachel, Dominica and the girls are going to drive down to Tarifa early in the day so that they can get there and get into the hostel and have everything taken care of before the hostel locks up for the night. Shawn and I will drive down very, very late at night after I am done working for the week so that we can make it.  Exhausting, but it was the affordable way to make it all work.

So excited!