The ski jump at Lillehammer

Tour of southern Norway

Once again I embarked on a road trip with my travelling companion Big Boy; this time in Norway, starting in Oslo. Of course, the first thing to ensure when travelling, is that you actually take a flight that lands in your destination city. Not to take a budget airline flight that lands somewhere amongst a thicket of trees, somewhere near a reindeer farm… 1.75 hours away from Oslo. Torp airport is so quiet that the ‘express’ bus to Oslo actually waits for the Ryanair flight to land before setting off! Continue reading →

The Roman ruins at Volubilis

The second leg of our tour of Morocco continued with a gruelling seven hour taxi ride from the south up to Meknes. In Morocco they have two types of taxis. Petit taxis for the cities and grand taxis for longer journeys. Most of these big taxis are clapped-out old Mercedes that they seem to believe can seat seven in comfort. They can’t. Even a trip with just five of us was tough. Nothing of the luxury from the prime of these Mercedes’ lifetime remains. But at least the roads were half decent most of the way.

Meknes was one of the most pleasant towns in which we stayed, being smaller and more low-key (i.e. less hassle) than the more traditional tourist stops such as Marrakech. We were lucky that the nearest mosque to our riad had a call to prayer sang beautifully in the early morning. It certainly made a difference to the awful racket most of the others make. Continue reading →

Ait Benhaddou kasbah

So once again I embarked on a trip with Big Boy, after our successful tour of Iceland in the summer, this time heading to Morocco. On the plane flying over, Big Boy spent hours perusing the Lonely Planet guide-book, making seemingly fastidious notes on potential sights and travel arrangements. Upon arrival it transpired that he had spent all of that time researching what food he would like to try and which restaurants to visit. Priorities now set, we checked in to our Riad after being ripped off by some little street urchins who carted our bags along the narrow alleyways, deep in Marrakech’s medina.

We bumped into a couple of Kiwis on the first night who had paid for some henna tattoos in the souk. They had quickly realised that the lady had tattooed their names on their arms in Arabic, as all of the traders who saw them took great pleasure in shouting out their names as they walked past. As if it wasn’t hard enough to avoid the attentions of persistent hawkers… Continue reading →