Last night was rough for me. I went to sleep worried about the airport/passport issue, and woke up even more worried. Plus, with two nights in a row of poor sleep and early mornings, my body was feeling a mess (sort throat, panicky, etc.). Nevertheless, we persist. I got my butt up at 4am, showered, and martialed H towards being ready. S is feeling a lot better too, which helped.
Our porter met us at 5am to haul our bags to the waiting car, which took us straight to the airport. Door to door, maybe 30 minutes. Once we got to the airport, we were able to enter the airport and go to the check-in counter (instantly, I stopped panicking and started breathing a little easier).
We had a small snafu with our checked luggage: because we have a 23-hour layover in Zurich, I confirmed thrice with the airlines that we’d have to pick up our luggage in Zurich and recheck the next day to LAX. We packed accordingly. But, when we got to the Marrakech airport, the check-in clerk printed out tags to send everything straight to LAX. We only caught the problem after the first three bags had entered the baggage area. Our clerk said he could fix this with new tags. He printed out the new tags for a Zurich pick-up, put one on the visible bag, and said he’d tag the other three bags that were already in the baggage area. No idea if he was able to do it or not.
Once we had our boarding passes, we stopped at Starbucks (H was disappointed that she couldn’t get any ham) for a snack. My panic energy had lifted, and my body had started shifting into exhaustion mode. Then, we headed to the gate.
Our passports were checked six times: once by the check-in clerk, once by the security clerk before we went through security, once by the customs agent, once by the security clerk after we went through security, once by the passport control agent, and then again by the gate agent.
The Marrakech airport is beautiful. High ceilings, dappled sunlight, but all of the hard surfaces made announcements unintelligible.
Once we were on the plane to Zurich, I closed my eyes. As soon as we lifted off, I fell asleep, waking 45 minutes later when the meal service began. The rest of the flight was uneventful, as was landing in Zurich (where all of our bags showed up!) and getting downtown on the train.
The city is lovely. We checked into our hotel and wandered the city for a few hours, including popping into the Giacometti-painted police station (where he painted, among other things, Pythagoras). S and H shopped, and I wandered down to the lake to people watch and take photos. The weather was sunny and warm, and the gobs of people on the street made it feel like the first warm day of spring.
We had a nice Italian dinner (and I had my first cocktail of the trip, thanks to Iceland’s penchant for shots and beer, and Morocco’s general dryness), followed by a walk back to the hotel by way of the lake. We all marveled at the orderliness of the Swiss compared to the chaos of the Moroccans.
S and I were exhausted by the time we got back to the room, so H put us to bed. She read to us, tucked us in, and then put herself to sleep. That kid! <3
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