Aug 14-15 The Long Journey Down. Part I – Out of England

In the interest of saving money, we chose to get to Morocco by finding the cheapest flights into Europe (which go to London), take a budget airline into Spain (Ryanair to Seville), then get ourselves to a port and ferry over to Morocco. While the overall cost, including hostels, might have still worked in our favour in the end, we spent inordinate amounts of time and energy making this roundabout journey. In hindsight, doing this the long way added much more adventure (stress too) to the trip.

The trip to Standsted airport (1 of the 3 major airports in London) itself was the first of our many ‘longest busrides in the world’. Rather than take an express train there, we opted for the cheaper coach bus ride leaving from the same station. Boarding the bus with what we thought plenty of time to spare, we ended up arriving in the airport 20 minutes before the gate closed. We had not anticipated the time it would take the bus simply to exit the maze known as the streets of London, a trip that included us crossing the bridges to twist and turn a bit and then doubling back All totaled, the ~60km journey took 2-3 hours. Luckily we are able to check in and power-walk it to the gate where we locate bathrooms. (Question of the day – do budget flights have toilets on board? Answer is yes.)

The flight to Seville was uneventful, and we arrived in the evening to much drier and warmer golden land. I started associating different countries and cities with colours after a while – the Netherlands countryside was an emerald green, London is white limestone buildings, Spain was dry golden sunrises and sunsets and Moroccan countryside is a dry dusty red.

Next: Aug 14-15 The Long Journey Down. Part II – In Spain