First day of our three-day Sahara desert tour from Marrakech.
The plan of the day's tour was to visit Aït Benhaddou Village, a desert village and UNESCO World Heritage Site where several movies were shot.
First day in Morocco, as we woke up to the ancient city of Marrakech.
The plan of the day was to visit the attractions in Marrakech Medina (Old City), book the desert tour to Sahara and exchange some Euro into the local currency of Dirham.
Originally, when I was planning this trip to Europe, I was fascinated by photos showing majesty of imposing Sahara sand dunes and intricacy of century-old ancient city streets, that the North Africa country of Morocco presented to the world, which also recently exempted visas for Chinese visitors. But with Morocco being in North Africa, which was a totally different fare zone in the airline charts than Europe, I hadn't been able to find a satisfying price. Luckily, when I was searching connection opportunities through Europe, I bumped into the poorly-rated budget carrier Ryanair, which offered quite competitive rates for flights to/from the Moroccan cities of Marrakech and Fez.
So with Qatar Airways' offer of cheap flights to Spain, my friend and I decided to spend three days each in the two major Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona as "transitions" between home and Morocco.
And now that we had visited the city of Madrid and its neighboring towns of Toledo and Segovia, we headed for the airport for our flight to Africa.
Last day of our three-day stay in Madrid before heading off for Marrakech. The plan of the day was to visit the attractions in the city, the two most important were Catedral de Santa María la Real de la Almudena and Royal Palace of Madrid.
Similar to the day before, we woke up to a rainy morning in Madrid.
The second day of our three-day stay in Madrid, and we chose to visit the historic city of Segovia, with its well-preserved Roman Aqueduct.
The first of our three-day stay at Madrid, and we picked the historic city of Toledo for our visit.
Historically, the city of Toledo has been the capital of the Spanish empire for nearly five centuries, and had housed the seat of the Spanish Church until the last century.
This post follows the previous ones about flights on Qatar Airways from Hangzhou to Madrid, and is about the rest of our first day in Madrid.
After getting off the plane, the city of Madrid welcomed us with its modern and spacious passenger terminal (T4S). The only thing not so nice about that bamboo design was that my camera seemed not so sure about its white balance.
With a luxurious 5-week winter holiday that could probably be my last, and with round-trip flights to Europe as low as 39XX CNY (It seemed that Qatar Airway’s year-round sale had never ended, and I was quite amazed to find such fares departing only three days from the Chinese New Year, and from my hometown Hangzhou), I planned another trip to Europe, with some good friend back to ninth grade.
Previously, I had 16 flights in and out of my home town's airport, all of which were domestic. Now, I could add its "international departure" to my achievements list.
Chinese New Year Day morning.
After a not-so-merry new year "celebration" under the KLCC Towers, followed by a two-hour nap, I was walking past benches filled by homeless people at Pudu Bus Station, and boarded a early-morning airport bus to Kuala Lumpur Airport.
Time to leave Cambodia as I picked up my luggage from the hostel and was immediately greeted by the waiting Tuk-Tuk driver on the street, who gave me a mystical smile (as God knows how many times in the previous days I had turned him down), who agreed to take me to the airport at a price of 4USD.
So 15 minutes after my first and last dusty Tuk-Tuk ride at Siem Reap, I was by the entrance of Siem Reap International Airport. No, I did walked like 50 meters from the main road, as there was sort of 1 USD Tuk-Tuk entrance fee imposed by the airport.
