Back to Casablanca

It was so hard to say goodbye to such wonderful people in Marrakech! The generosity and hospitality of the people we met there is so hard to convey in a blog. I did call my husband and made it clear to him that we do not know how to welcome people like they do in Morocco. (He was nice in agreeing with me but I may have woken him up when I was waxy philosophically about this issue. lol.)

Anyway, we hired a porter in both the train station when we left Marrekech and the one when we arrived in Casablanca. (We had our host teacher help us know how much to tip the porters so we would be generous but appropriate.) It was a HUGE help having someone not only move our heavy bags for us but to also ensure we got to the correct locations as efficiently as possible. In fact, we were at the taxi in Casablanca probably before we would have made it back to the main portion of the train station if we didn't have the porter. Now, the porter most likely took us to his taxi friends but when they got down to a more reasonable amount, we agreed to the price and arrived quickly at the hotel.

After getting into the hotel, I basically stayed in my room the rest of the night just to rest up from the adventure since we had the night to ourselves (which was great.)

Tips for future TGCers and Accessibility - The porters are worth it!!!! Even though I thought I'd be getting so much room back in my bag after giving away gifts, it didn't happen. Everyone was so generous so my bags filled up quickly and were heavy. Even my tote bag had to be duct-taped together since it started falling apart from the amount of stuff in it. Lol. Having the porter help move the heavy and/or awkward bags was a huge help. Our host teacher also explained to the porter that he needed to get our bags on the high shelf for us (apparently the other person didn't do that because we didn't ask on our way to Marrekech). Look for the guys with the hats (different colors in different cities.) As we were getting off the train in Casablanca, I was able to signal to one of the guys on the train that we needed a porter and one appeared very quickly shortly after we were on the ground. Once again, it's well worth it!!!