Monday, March 1, 2026
Here we go. On March 5th I’m off to Morocco with Bettyanne, tried-and-true travel partner from the Croatia trip. I’m semi packed and almost ready, and loaded with anxiety.
What’s with that? I think I always go through a bit of this, but it’s easily forgotten once the joy and excitement of a trip is underway. I need to remind myself that I’m not alone in the planning. Bettyanne, while not a super-experienced traveller, is resourceful and does her research. I’m probably taking on more responsibility than I have to. And I need to remind myself that in the days of travelling with John, I did most, if not all of the planning. (But he was here to share my anxiety!) Anyhow, I settled myself yesterday by taking care of a bunch of packing details.
Yeah, the packing. It’s not about clothes — that part is easy. Several shirts, several bottoms, several outer layers; a couple of pairs of shoes; sundries like a sunhat and a bathing suit. The latter, I confess is a just-in-case item I carry because I think I’ll undergo a massive character change and want to swim. (I did swim…er… dip in the ocean for a couple of minutes in Croatia.)
I think I just talked myself out of taking the bathing suit.
The real challenge in packing is in all the “little” extras I think I need: toiletries, meds, electronics, the things that support the complicated bedtime rituals I seem to need in order to sleep. I’m counting out enough-plus pills, checking my chargers (and charging everything that can be charged), buying Kobo books, loading tiny jars with lotions and potions.
And making lists, and lists of lists. I tell myself I can buy there almost anything I might forget. BUT not my hearing aid charger! Not my bluetooth toggle that transmits the plane’s movie soundtrack into my noise-cancelling earbuds! Not my silk eye mask! Not my precious loaded Kobo! Not the serums that allow me to deceive myself about how good my skin looks at 73! Can I live without this stuff? NO!!
If you’re enthusiastic about packing details, they’re down below. Most readers will not be.
So, this trip.
We’re taking a tour. Now, I am not a tour person (she tells herself convincingly, despite the last two trips being boat-and-bike tours. Those don’t count, do they?) I have been in places, meticulously researched by self well in advance, where the tour groups cluster behind the guide-with-a-flag, faces bored or confused or both, surely just wanting to grab an aperitif in that inviting-looking café on the corner, and not follow the herd to the next highly-rated, over-explained monument. I’ve watched them from that café, thankful I’m not one of them.
But, Morocco— it ain’t Europe. I’d be a bit daunted to undertake it independently. Getting from place to place, including into the mountains and out to the desert, seems like something hard to navigate on one’s own. Bettyanne found this tour: Wild Women Expeditions, Ultimate Morocco. It’s expensive, but a rather large cut above anything I’ve done before in terms of luxury, staying in upscale, boutique, palace-like accommodations. I think I can get into that for a couple of weeks! We’ll be with a group of twelve women plus a Moroccan guide, travelling by “private vehicle,” which probably means a large van. We’ll hit all the hot spots and do a few things only women would be privy to, like visiting a women’s co-op, where we’ll learn some Moroccan cooking. We’ll also ride bikes in a desert oasis, hike in the Atlas mountains, ride camels in the Sahara, and glamp under the stars in a truly dark sky. Yeah, I think I can do that!
Wild Women Expeditions
Returning from Morocco, the only half-way reasonable flights require an overnight layover in Paris. Deciding that it would be torture to spend a night so-close-yet-so-far from Paris, we chose instead to spend some days in the City of Light, which could be the City of Rain at the end of March. We’ve rented an apartment in the Marais for 5 nights. We have spent more hours planning four days in Paris than we spent on every other bit of planning for this trip. Right, that’s the advantage of a tour: book a flight, pack your bags, and you’re good to go!
This trip’s itinerary outline:
Marrakech, 2 nights
Wild Women Ultimate Morocco Tour, 14 nights
Paris, 5 nights
For packing nerds:
For this trip, we’re travelling Air France which has a luggage weight limit of 12 kg for both carry-on and personal item. I don’t check a bag. Sometimes I think life would be an awful lot easier if I did, but then I remember the two times my bag did not reach my destination when I did. That would be okay on the trip home, but it’s never on the trip home, is it? I had not worried about luggage weight in the past. I have travelled Air France and they didn’t weigh my undoubtedly-overweight carry-on. But last year my bag got weighed by Croatia Air, and it was 1.2 kg over the allowable 8 kg, so I had to check it — despite the plane being half empty and the overhead bin, after all, almost completely empty.
My trusty Eddie Bauer rolling duffel, which has been my mainstay for every trip I’ve been on, from weekend jaunts to Campbell River to a three-month stint in India and Sri Lanka, weighs 3 kg empty. And I have to admit, it’s getting tired, with some side supports bulging out. After an extensive search, I decided to get a Bellroy lite carry-on, another soft-sided bag on two wheels which comes in at 2 kg, the lightest bag I could find. Soft, because I can stuff it when size is not an issue, and two wheels because I want to be able to drag it over cobblestones and up and down stairways. So, the bag is gorgeous, but oh man is it tiny! And while I’m used to the single compartment of the Eddie Bauer, it has several pockets/pouches, including a couple of puffy ones on the front that really need to be filled with something. So I have to learn to re-pack. On a recent weekend trip, I learned that the main front pouch is great for dirty laundry. Or shoes. I dunno. Shoes on the way there, dirty laundry on the way back?
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| Trusty old Eddie Bauer on the right, teeny new Belroy on the left. |
In addition to the Bellroy, I bought an Osprey Day-Lite day pack. I tend to put a lot of weight in the “personal item,” including my laptop and the entire trip’s worth of daily essentials, in case my carry-on gets gate-checked and then lost, which can happen. The lightest personal-item bag I’ve used has been my old (2004!) Rick Steves Civita, a bare minimum, unstructured backpack, but it kills me to walk around with it. The new day pack is constructed for comfort and has a waist belt for additional support. I’m excited to try it out. Since Air France considers total weight rather than just that of the carry-on, I’ll keep my laptop in the laptop sleeve of the Bellroy, where it’s easy to pull out if I do get gate-checked.
I haven’t mentioned my new SCOTTeVEST. It has 154 pockets I think. At least, more pockets than anyone could need. So many pockets, the biggest challenge will be figuring out what to put in each pocket — and then remembering what I put where. I bought it (at an exorbitant price, even at 40% off) so that I could load it up with the heavy things and keep my luggage weight down. It will also work as a warmth layer, and I’m hoping to find it a useful replacement for carrying a bag. One pocket is big enough for a water bottle. Many pockets zipper on the inside, for security. Should be good. The only problem I can foresee is that the airlines will cotton on to the loading-the-vest movement (and I think it will be movement), and start weighing our outer garments. That would seem wrong, though; how could they compare me at 50 kg to the 100 kg man in the line behind me? For that matter, how can they do it now? Why 12 kg? It should be 12 kg + some pre-determined allowance for body weight. Oh, but that would be discriminatory. Like it isn’t now?
SCOTTeVEST
Anyhow, the practice pack is pretty much done, and my two bags together weigh just under the 12 kg allowance, even without really loading the vest.
Do I feel ready? Thanks to some good friends who have taken me out to distract me, my nerves are (somewhat) calmed. The weather looks good for the first flight across the Strait of Georgia in a float plane. Whew. Here we go!
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