Our first full day in Morocco.
We woke up to a glorious day, blue skies and warm weather, not too dissimilar to what we had left behind in Brisbane.
Helen goes to Morocco Day 3 – Casablanca
Helen goes to Morocco Day 2 – Airports & Casablanca
September 8, 2019. The day started early and like any travel that involves flying half way round the world through time zones was a looooong day.
We landed in Abu Dhabi just after midnight. I was quite delighted to see that the Lego camel was still there. The camel once again got to nibble on some Kate Spade Cup Cake like it did for #Helengoesnorth back in 2015/2016 ( a trip like many that never really made it on to the blog…)
Abu Dhabi Lego Camel 23/11/2015 Abu Dhabi Lego Camel 08/09/2019
Helen Goes to Morocco Day 1 – Leaving Australia
1 year ago today, Mum, Aunty Margaret and I left to go Morocco for a trip that was to last about 5 weeks.
We were heading to Morocco with Take a Walk Adventures to literally take a walk round Morocco 😀 also with quite a bit of driving as well but the general gist of the trip was to walk and in varying ways we did walk and walk some more.
Morocco had been number 1 on my countries to visit for a very long time, since I mid-teens to be precise when I first read The Drifters by James Michener, where Marrakech features as the last destination in the novel. To finally get to travel to Morocco was something that I was very excited about but also a bit scared and anxious about, would Morocco in real life be like the Morocco had I had imaged over the last 17+ years? In a move to hopefully not be disappointed by Morocco and due to the nature of the trip, I purposely did very little research, I did not want to have oodles of photos in my mind taken by others of the places we were to visit, I did not want the stories and experiences of others to flavour the memories I hoped to build on this trip.
Please, click here to continue reading 🙂 “Helen Goes to Morocco Day 1 – Leaving Australia”15 years on, an update
Wow, that is a bit of mind flash writing those words. 15 years on. When I first started this blog, I didn’t really think about what it would look like in the future. I did know that when other blogs started to fade away, I wanted to keep mine alive. Even if it was not updated regularly but as a snippet of time, forever there on the internet whilst I continued to pay the hosting fees.
Back in April 2005, I posted this post – where I have been and where I want to go
15 years ago, I would have thought there would have been more coloured on this map by 2020 but life happens, adventures happens and some trips have just not yet been made.
I’ve only included countries where I have stayed a night so Singapore and the UAE are not included.
Perhaps in the next 15 years once we are out of the COVID-19 world that we live in currently, there will be more red on this map next time.
If you want to do a map yourself, you are able to do them at this website – Visited Countries
Harira Soup
One of my fondest food discoveries from Morocco was the Harira soup. Savouring the different versions we had of it as we travelled around that great country was a total delight.
Some times, it had vermicelli in, some times not.
Some times, it was made on a meat stock base, some times not.
Some times, it was quite a thin soup, some times not.
Some times, it had quite a few lentil varieties in it, some times not.
Some times, it was quite red, sometimes it was more orange.
Every time it was pretty darn tasty, some times just a lot more tasty 🙂
It was one of the foods that every time we were presented with a buffet, I quickly scoped out the soup option, would this soup that I so dearly loved be present?
When a pot of soup would be brought to our table by our cooks or hosts whilst travelling, I eagerly awaited the opening of the pot, would it contain this soup that I so dearly loved?
The eve of 33
I’m sitting here on the eve of my 33rd birthday waiting for orange syrup to reduce down before I crawl up in bed to read another chapter of Optimism by Bob Brown. A book that so far at the start of chapter 34 has had me laughing, crying, smiling, sobbing and pondering.
I have pondered many times over the past years, the updates required to this little blog on my little corner of the interwebs. When you no longer update the blog regularly (hello Instagram) should you do big catch up posts on the miscellany that is my life or should I just post random snippets of this life? It then of course all becomes too hard and the number of unpublished drafts increases in numbers and the pages in my various notebooks that contain my thoughts increase. Please, click here to continue reading 🙂 “The eve of 33”