I got the cab to stop at Hammersmith Station. It was already rush hour and the surrounds were busy and crazy. I noticed a theatre with Ben Howard’s name on it. Apparently it was his 2nd show in London. Ahh I missed it. Oh well, perhaps one time… in case I get to be in Ireland and catch up on his shows.
I was in a little bit of a frenzy, already bugged down with the number of bags I had with me. Silly enough, I’ve been smacking people with my guitar. Inevitable in my case. I could feel my wrists getting stretched too much whilst trying to balance two separate bags.
I saw Alf from the corner of the station, just in front of the statue. We were laughing coz I couldn’t even hug her properly because of the bag I had attached in front of me.
Alf has been a really good friend of mine back in the University of Auckland days. We met each other in one of the Upgrade projects. She eventually moved to Sydney, and I met up with her there when I landed with a job. After a few years, she moved to UK with her partner Darko.
It was so good seeing each other again. They’ve been living in a 1-bedroom apartment beside the River Thames, with the window that had a lovely view of the sunset and a riverside walk they can stroll on if they fancied. There was a nearby stadium and basketball court, and the bus station was just a 6 minute walk away. I noticed 2 postcards by the window pane, one from Montreal which I sent Alf and another from Auckland. When I asked who it was from, she asked me to read it for myself. I was so touched when I saw it was for me, a postcard from the Sosna family J. Woot! My first time to get a postcard via another friend.
It hasn’t been the first time I’ve traveled with Alf. Back in the days when we were still living in Sydney, we decided to go for a weekend road trip down south. And the Morocco trip would be our second travel together.
And so… we were on an adventure. We sorted ourselves out immediately once we got to the apartment. We already booked the air tickets a few weeks back, so that was good to be out of the way. The last thing was to book ourselves the hotels/riads and print out our boarding passes.
Darko arrived and changed for a basketball game. Alf and I rushed along to a nearby computer shop to get everything printed out. We strolled along the river on our way back.. making it a leisure walk after our earlier brisk walk. The sun was painting its lovely colours on the horizon as Alf updated me about a few things.
Around 10 pm we started packing up. It seemed to be a big mission trying to fit our stuff in 1 bag, let alone the fact that we had to make sure space was available for our handbags. With budget airlines it’s always a big task with carryon bags. Alf had to give me a few tips and pointers about RyanAir and EasyJet. On our way to Marrakech, we’d be getting on EasyJet and on our way, RyanAir. Now the thing is, both airlines requires your boarding passes printed out if you’ve checked in online, or else, you get charged. Go figure.
Of course, as girls, we had to figure out which “fashion” clothing would be good to have in the bag, considering it’s going to be hot and we wanted to laze around the beach (the goal). We both took 1 dress with us, and a few tops. Our liquids were streamlined and a few items were discarded.
Alf was ready for bed around 1 AM. I decided to stay up all the way through coz I opted to be researching about Europe places. I tried a few times to sort out my train to Scotland, but for some reason my card was always rejected, and I couldn’t even think of any reason why. I ended giving up on it and instead, emailing the personnel that I had technical problems booking the train tickets. I did get a response the following day but I was well on my way to Morocco, so decided to put it in the backburner. I sort of took it as a sign that maybe I wasn’t meant yet to book my trip to Scotland anyway.
By 3:45 am we were on the cab to London Gatwick International Airport. It was crazy… I did find it even crazier than the London Heathrow International Airport, to be honest. And I’m not fond of airports that can be that busy. I do still prefer my Auckland Intl airport, where space was still abundant and people were not in a frantic.
We bought ourselves a bottle of water and breakfast. Around 6:10 am we were up in the air, bound for Marrakech, Morocco on the 21st of June, 2013.
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