As you may remember, our plans included a stay in Marrakech for the months of November and December. Now that there’s been an earthquake in Morocco, we’ve reconsidered. Because so many of you have asked us about our plans, we thought we’d write about our decision.
Rethinking Marrakech
We were devastated to see the pictures of all the destruction, and our hearts go out to the people of Morocco as they rebuild. We don’t think there are any easy answers here. And we are well aware that even those who share our priorities might make different choices. Among our reasons not to go – perhaps more obvious – are not wanting to be in the way of recovery efforts and not wanting to consume resources needed elsewhere. Then there have been the criticisms of how the government has handled the crisis, which might manifest itself in various ways. So personal safety also crossed our mind. We think we know that any aftershocks would not last until November, but there is the possibility of unrest.
On the plus-column was the fact that we were really looking forward to the trip (John having never been and Laurel loving her brief time there). And also the very real benefit, we hoped, of bringing dollars to the area and perhaps even of being of some use. As you may know, lots of tourist destinations suffer for a long time after a natural disaster: people stay away and sometimes never come back, just when infusions of international cash are most welcome.
In the end, we decided to postpone our trip to Marrakech for at least a year. However much we are eager to see the medina, we can wait.
And so…
So where, you are wondering, will be be in November and December? We’ve had to make decisions like this before, sometimes with much less notice. It helps that we have a pretty clear set of criteria. We need to be out of the Schengen area. We wanted to be as close as possible to either England or Spain or both to minimize travel and our carbon footprint. Without cold-weather clothes, we need a fairly temperate climate. We like being near water, so we thought we’d throw that into the mix too. Our three finalists turned out to be Alexandria, Egypt, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Kotor, Montenegro. The first two, obviously, are full of interesting historical goodies (we’ve both been to one and one of us has been to the other). The last is new to us, though we’d planned a trip there a couple of years ago during the pandemic.
And the winner is Kotor! Temperatures are a bit chillier than we’d like, but it looks stunning, and we are really looking forward to getting to know a bit more about a country that we don’t know much about. We’ll let you know what we find, of course. And we’ll keep an eye on Morocco and start planning now for our visit to Marrakech in 2024.
