September 3, 2014 Summer Break


Well, we made it to Rabat/Sale, Bouregreg Marina, in Morocco--a little roughed up but safe. We stayed only long enough to get Serenity secured and buttoned up and we were off for a short break. There are no international flights from Rabat (which is the capital of Morocco, by the way), so we booked a flight from Rabat to Casablanca which has international flights. We got up real early to take a taxi to the Rabat airport and waited for about two hours to find out that our Royal Moroccan Airlines flight to Casablanca had been canceled due to lack of customers. They loaded the five of us that had pre-puchased airline tickets into a small bus and drove us to Casablanca--we arrived after about one and a half hours, about the time our flight would have arrived. There were no flights from Casablanca to Los Angeles so we had decided to fly to London to connect to L.A. And as we had some time on our hands we decided to stay four days in London to re-visit the city. When we got to London, and after waiting about an hour, we found out that Royal Moroccan Airlines had lost some of our luggage. Actually, it was not lost but was sent on a later flight--apparently a common thing with RM Airlines. We were actually lucky as the baggage that was delayed was our gift bin (loaded with the junk we buy for our kids and gkids)--we had both of our bags with our clothes and toiletries. We checked into the Hampton hotel right in the North terminal of Gatwick Airport--very convenient.
We needed to take the train into London but that was kind of cool and we were soon well versed in the train and tube (subway) routine. We walked all around London--Hyde Park, Harrods, Piccadilly Square, etc. We ate fish and chips and toured China town where we had an excellent lunch at a Chinese restaurant (in China town?--go figure). We also went to the theater to see the play 'Wicked' was was also cool. We crammed as much into our four days as we possibly could and caught our long flight to LAX on July 20th.
It has been five years since we have been home during summer and we missed some of our favorite summer things that we like to do. We took the kids and gkids to Catalina Island, mountain biked and hiked in Mammoth, went to the beach, and enjoyed being with our family--our favorite thing to do. We will stay for approximately three months then head back to Serenity and get ready to cross the Atlantic in November. "Life is what happens when you are busy doing something else", we are doing our best do it right the first time.