Phew, a busy few days. Since Thursday we have been in Marrakech, Tangier (overnight train last night, never done that before - sharing a compartment with a fairly randy old couple too, just as well we could watch a film on the i-touch!) then a flight to Madrid this afternoon after meeting Tom in a cafe in Tangier, a really nice guy from Prague who shared a cab to the airport with us - through very flooded Tangien roads in a battered old Fiat Panda, and on the way here we decided to go to Thailand.

A bit of a change of plan, but what we hadn´t realised was that both of us are totally knackered from such a hectic year of work and the build up to this trip and as such we really should have started with a holiday to chill out before trying our luck in places unknown. We also decided that we really wanted to holiday somewhere hot and having used our fabulous geography and mapping skills (!) we thought that Thailand would be the best bet. Our (rough) plan is spend a week in a hotel in Thailand (still cheap but near the beach, €20 a night) and then do a bit of exploring in that area for a couple of weeks, then possibly over to Aus for Christmas, then hopefully over to the Phillipines in January to stay with good friends, then get back to the second part of the original plan... and after that who knows? The great thing about all of this is that we can, so long as the cost is not prohibitive, change our minds about where we go and when, whenever we want. Starting to feel a bit more relaxed now but neither of us are feeling 100% yet - think the holiday will do us both a lot of good.

Two days in Marrakech was enough for both of us; we saw quite a bit and experienced different sides of the town - the old town is very old fashioned and traditional (although they have the tourists totally sussed) and we were also there for Eid - almost everything closed down completely on Saturday and there were a lot of fires in the street with burning bits of dead sheep which wasn´t particularly pleasant. We bumped into a friendly South Moroccan guy called Mohamed who had done some studying in Newcastle Upon Tyne so we had a cup of coffee with him before visiting the Jardins Majorelle (if you´re ever in Marrakech you should definitely take the time to go - the gardens are tropical and totally beautiful. We spent nearly 2 hours there just looking around and feeling chilled out).

We arrived in Tangier this morning at 7.30am on the overnight train, and were halfway towards the seafront when Simon realised that his mobile was no longer in his pocket. ARGH!! (Sally´s eyes must surely be rolling as she reads this!) We ran back to the train station where the staff who had cleared the train hadn´t seen it at all, but they very kindly let us check for ourselves and Simon found it under the mattress of the bunk he´d been sleeping in - big relief. We took a walk along the beach which was deserted. The sun had already risen and it was fairly warm but by the time we´d walked as far as the port (about half an hour´s walk) and settled down for a cup of coffee the weather had become truly British and we nearly got drenched...

Had a lovely meal this evening in a tapas bar 2 minutes from our hotel in Madrid (very busy tonight - lots of locals watching the Madrid/Barcelona match there) and then back here in the hotel lobby we´ve gone online and booked Thailand. Quite a tiring few days so we´re off to bed shortly before our flight tomorrow which (STASCo peeps might chuckle at this) stops over at Doha for 8 hours. Any suggestions of things we can do there...?

Hope you´re all well,

Simon and Jane xx