5am - Had to wake up really early this morning to catch my flight to Amsterdam en route to Morocco. After a quick breakfast, I had a quick shower but missed the bus by a few minutes. Well no problem I caught the next bus. My flight was at 7am so I was supposed to be at the airport at 5. :) Eventually I arrived at 6:15am and just made it in time. A. was already there, so no worries.
9:30am - The flight was delayed by a bit so didn't arrive until 9:30am or so in Amsterdam. We were supposed to arrive at 8:40am. But anyway we made it in one piece, and arrived into Schiphol airport. The flight to Marrakech was at 3:35pm, so we decided to go to the city to check it out. I was there last year during summer for a very short period of time, but it's nice to see it during winter.
Ticket machines at Schiphol plaza.
Oh we bought the tickets just after getting out of customs, it cost about 17 euros or something along those lines for 2 adults. So we went straight downstairs to catch the train.
Waiting waiting waiting....
We caught the train after waiting only a few minutes since they run quite often.
10:15am The airport is only 15 minutes away. Here's central station just getting off the train.
Central station.
Entrance to Central Station.
Along Damrak, a very popular street.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak, Van Gogh 3d art exhibition.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak.
Along Damrak.
Along Damstraat.
Yes, gangnam style along Damstraat.
Along Damstraat.
Along Damstraat.
Along Damstraat.
Along Damstraat.
Along Oude Hoogstraat, I took the same picture last year!
Rembrandt house.
Along waterlooplein.
Along waterlooplein.
Along waterlooplein.
Along waterlooplein.
Along waterlooplein, this is the public library.
Along Rembrandtplein.
Along Rembrandtplein.
Along Herengracht.
Along Rembrandtplein. Booking.com in the background.
12:20pm Lunch! Today's Chinese New Year, so I ordered noodles. :)
Chicken lomen.
Chicken and seafood fried noodles.
Chicken gyoza.
12:56pm Done with lunch, so it's time to walk back and catch the train.
Along Amstel.
Along Amstel.
Along Rokin.
Along Rokin.
Along Rokin.
2pm Arrived back in Schiphol plaza. Our flight was supposed to be at 3:35pm, but it got delayed for an hour! So we had an extra hour to kill.
Walking along Schiphol plaza.
We went through customs and had to take off our shoes. That's fine, but then there was another ridiculous checkpoint right before you board the plane. Pretty stupid I'd say.
Waiting waiting waiting...
Bye Schiphol, for now...
Eventually we boarded close to 5pm and didn't leave until 5ish. By now we were quite antagonised and tired.
8pm We arrived into Marrakech, finally. Stepping straight out of the airport, we went to look for an ATM. I obtained 8000 dirhams, then took out an additional 100 dirhams. Bought mineral water 2 bottles for 28 dirhams and got some change from there. We walked out of the airport looking for a taxi, none of the taxi drivers said their meters were working. How convenient. I was going to walk to the main road to catch a taxi, and got hustled by all these taxi drivers giving all sorts of excuses. One of them kept asking me where I was from, I refused to answer because I know he was going to try to rip me off depending on where I'm from. Amazing. I was sticking to 50 dirhams which is already plenty for them, eventually I settled for 60. They just tell you up front it's 150 and oh there's an airport tariff and so on. The trick is to stand your ground and move on if they don't want to settle, there's a zillion taxis everywhere. Arrived safely to our accommodation after having to guide the taxi driver, yes I had to guide the taxi driver, he did not know how to get there! Thankfully I printed out a map on how to get there.
Anyway, dinner was seaweed crackers, since we too tired to go anywhere. Lights out around 10pm or so.
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