Home Again

First, apologies for the serious delay to this post. I know I should have posted a marker and gone back to fill in the details later. My problem is that I do like telling stories. It was a hard lesson that in work presentations you usually have to give the punchline at the start of the story and include the middle at the end to skip over when there's no time.
I left the story on the way to Marrakesh.
We arrived well after dark, dodging horse-drawn carts jumping out of the darkness, we hit what seemed the edge of the town centre and started driving around looking for a hotel. Sarah was driving and the traffic made left turns unappealing, so we ended up heading out into the sticks again. I thought I had a vague mental map, based on the half-truths in the guidebook, so I volunteered directions. We did actually find a hotel, but while I went in to check rates, etc. The others had decided to hire a taxi so we could follow it to a hotel that looked good in the book, as we did in Tangier. This worked well as far as getting us in sight on the hotel door, but we needed a couple of tries to reach the underground car park at the back. It was worth it, though, as the hotel was much nicer than the one I'd found.
By now, it was after 10pm and the local Moroccan restaurant was closing, so we had to have a local Italian instead.
The next day was a) Friday and b) Ramadan so the taxi driver we called told us the normal shops would be shut until noon and took us to an government-regulated artisan shop instead. This worked out well, because the prices were fixed. I'm not confident enough in my haggling, especially against world-class experts, to imagine I'd generally beat those on my own. Besides, it saves time and makes buying decisions easier.
We loaded up on tagines, blankets, etc. And wondered around. We didn't find any fascinating alley-maze like Fez, so I don't know if there is one and we couldn't find it.
Keith and Sarah had wanted all along to bring back as souvenirs from Marrakesh some of the Green Mosque Alarm clocks that fans of The Apprentice (UK version) will be familiar with. They secured some and were delighted.
After a quick lunch near the hotel we hit the road to Tangier, stopping only for tea in McDonald's. Keith had been promising himself a Big Mac to celebrate his return to Europe, but pre-peaked. The place became noticably busier at about 6:20pm, the time recognised as sunset for Ramadan.
We stayed again, for our last night in Morocco, at the Continental Hotel, where we were welcomed back to our previous rooms.

The schedule said the ferries left every 2 hours, so the following morning we left with just enough time to get one. However, it turned out that the schedule hadn't been adjusted for the extra Ramadan hour, so we had to wait the extra hour. Processing was another series of palms wanting greasing. Unfortunately, we'd spent out of Moroccan paper money and had no Euros either. The "helpers" looked down on coins as "for children" and weren't at all happy with us. I wasn't about to break into my stash of 20 pound notes to provide tips! The guy organising the final queues for loading was the most unhappy. We scraped up all our last Eurocent coins to give him something and he literally threw them away, then returned once we'd gone aboard (admittedly, lovely and quick) and was disgusted that we hadn't magically gained extra cash to give away during our 100-yard journey.
The voyage was fun, standing out on the rear deck in the sunshine and watching as our view of Tangier gradually widened to span the whole coast of Morocco's Northern peninsular.

As we drove off the ferry in Tarifa, Keith said that he and Sarah wanted to drive straight to Paris non-stop. I think they were inspired to reproduce journeys their dad has made in the past. I didn't see any reason to disagree so that's what we did, 200km each, me first and then Sarah.
Over the course of the trip, the packing in the back had got worse and worse until there was only a small space to sit - very uncomfortable for a big geezer like me. Before Keith's stint, I insisted on re-packing the back, quite amusing Sarah when I stated my objective that I'd be able to lay down. Keith drove on with me in the back, and with a couple of pieces juggled, I was able to sit reclining against the pile with my legs straight out or curl up sideways. Smug and snug.
We drove on in turns round the clock until the small hours of the following morning when Sarah was too tired for her stint so Keith took over and wished he hadn't. That morning I was, surprisingly for the oldest, the most awake.
We'd decided on Versailles as our target, mainly because it's on the RER line so we could go into Paris for a night out. It came to naught, because the others basically slept through from a late lunch until the following morning. Ah well.
The next day was Sunday, and we decided that we only really wanted to be home, drove to Calais, went into both ferry company huts, just made a SeaFrance crossing and started using sterling again.
As we came round the M25, I reflected that the fabulous mind-expanding 3-week experience of Morocco, ramadan, Sahara and back was a world away from two package-deal weeks by the pool!