Would a Maharajah Sleep Here?

Morocco day 1. Like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope we are "On the Road to Morocco” and I am traveling with Dorothy Lamour. For you younger folk just look this one up. As you may have guessed we left for Morocco today which just happened to be our 25th anniversary. I don’t think there was any trip we anticipated more. Morocco just seems so exotic. When we started telling people we were going to morocco we were surprised how many of you have been here. I thought it was a pretty far out place to go. I guess I was wrong. To all of you who have made the trip here sorry but we don’t have time to visit all of your friends. For a while I was thinking you all had more friends in morocco then you had at home. To get here we traveled on Air France. I was actually looking forward to this airline. International carriers most of the times are much better and give better service than our domestics. I thought a nice French anniversary meal 35,000 feet over Paris was a nice touch for our 25th. ............Driving to the city from the airport we could have been traveling through the central valley in California. I was surprised how good the roads and bridges were. Even as we traveled through the center of the city you could see that money has been spent on infrastructure. In these difficult times around the world it looks like they are still improving Casablanca. Going to our hotel we passed a massive new marina project that will be beautiful when its done. We arrived at our hotel some 20 hours after we left San Francisco very tired and excited. We were taken to Le Doge, a small boutique hotel with only 16 rooms. Our room is a charming modern Moroccan style with jelly green carpets and white leather couches. The elevator we came up in was an experience. Have you ever been in an hotel elevator that has a max capacity of 3 people? It was tiny. Even though we only had a few hours of sleep on the plane, it didn’t hold us back; we hit the town with great enthusiasm. First stop Rick's American Café. Humphrey Bogart's old haunt from the movie Casablanca. Humphrey and Ingrid weren't there, and if truth be told they have never set foot in the place. We did have a chance meeting with the present owner and a piano player named Sam. We just had to make the pilgrimage to one of the most famous movie spots of all time. The food was typical American, not very exotic. Then again Casablanca translates to White House. We have one of those and it’s not exotic either. As we prepared to leave Ricks, Sam sat down to play "As Time Goes by." Leaving I just had to say "Leanne, this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful Anniversary.”