Another one rides the bus

Thursday morning and the weather was much worse. Raining, though not too hard, and a bit colder. We were in possession of tickets which allow us on 2 buses and 1 boat, hop on hop off style, and had not ordered breakfast. I recalled some stalls near the place where all those forms of transport leave, in Bolotnaya park, so we head in that direction.

It takes a while, because there's a huge road to cross next to the House on the Embankment. It seems to have 4 or 5 lanes in each direction but in Moscow the highway code seems entirely optional. Most crossings have a countdown telling you how many seconds until the green man allows you to cross, but this one does not. We mildly peg it during a rare gap. At the next crossing there are no gaps, the lights don't seem to change, very few of the locals are daring to cross, and the filter lanes are appropriated by people who don't want to turn. It probably takes us more than 5 minutes to cross both roads.

In and through the park, the stalls are selling ice cream only, making a mockery of my recollection. We don't buy, and hope there's at least some crisps or something on the 60-120 minute boat ride. It's still raining a bit, everything is grey and bleak, but the forecast said the afternoon would be worse and anyway there's a boat and they wave us on. There are 5 staff and only us, the interior of the boat looks like a floating primary school with uncomfortable immovable plastic seating in two aisles, 3 each side, with long narrow desks in front of each row. Someone checks our tickets, and after 10 minutes or so of nothing happening an angry sailor checks them again, staring at one for upwards of 30 seconds. Eventually a bus arrives and a few other people get on, and then we are all told to get up and move to an adjacent identical boat that has just pulled up.

In the new boat, the cover has been opened because the rain has stopped - there is a section of about 4 rows in the centre which is now open air. We sit at one of them and lay out our guidebook and maps while everyone else starts on picnics. The angry man takes a long time to stare at some other people's tickets. There is obviously no food. Nor is there anything English, no audio guide, no written guide, no announcements. The stereo system at the front does not play even a Russian guide to the sights, but is just pumping out some terrible Moscow radio station. It starts to rain, quite hard, so the cover is closed and we set off.

In very short time, we pull a U-turn next to Peter the Columbus, at the end of the island. This is unexpected, because the map kinda shows that we should be heading all the way to the Radisson past Kievskaya before coming back and doing a circuit of the island. Never mind. Helen gets some shots of the awful statue through rain-covered plastic and we begin a slow trip past all the stuff we've already seen multiple times a day so far: the Red October complex, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Kremlin. The locals all keep heading out into the rain to get some photos of pretty things under bleak skies; we stay put.

Our understanding of this as a hop-on hop-off tour is challenged, because we never stop anywhere. We go past a few building sites, and one of the seven sisters (a big fuck off apartment block), and reach a monastery that looks quite nice. Then we turn back, going up the other side of the island. I am cranky as fuck now. There's fun bleak and there's starving hungry this-boat-tour-is-shit bleak. And it is shit. At one point one of the small children onboard lets out a piercing scream. Really hope this finishes back where we started.

Mercifully, after almost exactly an hour, it does. We're back at the park where twice we have seen a man dressed in half-arsed armour handing out leaflets for a Russian restaurant - we have one of these leaflets, there's lots of English on it and we are fucking ravenous. It's easy to find though requires crossing an almost uncrossable road, again. Inside we are seated and handed a big English menu by a man in what we presume is traditonal Russian dress. Success?

While I make friends with the canary in a small cage on the window next to me, we decide on food: starters of potato in lard for me, and, um, something chickeny for Helen. It's hard to remember what we ordered because they never arrived; our waiter tried to get us to order steak, coca-cola, and Russian vodka but we wanted none of it. Some bonus starters of a cherry pancake and some bread and pickles turned up, as did our drinks: my lager was indeed a lager, Helen's lemonade was a pint of unadulterated unsweetened undiluted freshly squeezed pure lemon juice. Powerful stuff.

Our mains arrive; I ordered "crocodile ice fish" which turns out to be a plate of fish and chips. Very nice fish, and certainly not a kind of fish I'd had before, but still, a very expensive fish and chips. Helen had some dumplings with sour cream. We ask for the bill and on it are our free starters, marked as free, and the paid for starters we never had. We tot up the price of the missing stuff as about 4 quid so fuck it, we let it slide. It's not like the food or surroundings were bad, but there's no fight in us to try and argue a bill.

Lunch done, the weather is getting better and we still have tickets. The park itself is quite nice and has a big statue called Children Are Victims of Adults' Vices (or something like that). There are two joyous young scamps at the front, while behind is a semi-circle of representations of all the bad shit adults get up to that fucks kids up: prostitution, war, ignorance, "irresponsible science" and so on. It's actually very cool.

Baaaack to the bus stop via some coffee out the back of a van and a look at some metal trees on a bridge covered in individually marked padlocks, like that bridge in Paris. Then, two buses arrive, one for each route. We walk up to the no.2 and the driver just waves us away. Oh. Turns out the tour buses are all on lunch now, and various members of staff head to the restaurant we've just left. It's now 3pm and we've not yet made it off the island.

Thankfully, Helen is actually enjoying her birthday. I'm twitchy because I suck at just sitting down letting the world go by and am very glad when the buses finally start their afternoon shift. We make damn sure to get on before the surly couple who'd barged past us at Red Square the previous day, and get a good seat in the open air bit. Moscow traffic is fucking crazy and we slowly go through junctions where horns blare constantly and lights don't seem to change, while being serenaded by a wide variety of different sirens on different emergency vehicles. The gaps between bits of commentary are very wide, and the voice alternates between a woman whose accent is such that we were told NO SMIRKING and the bloke from the other bus who overuses the word "however".

After heading up through a very commercial district over the Garden Ring we see two more of the seven sisters - the Radisson hotel (aka Hotel Ukraine) being one - plus the "white house" old seat of parliament, and the excellent Kievskaya train station. Finally some people hop off the bus, which is reassuring as it's the first time anyone has got on or off either bus or boat outside of Red Square or Bolotnaya Park.

We have the British Embassy pointed out to us and then they witter on about something to do with Sherlock Holmes, but we're confused: there's a British Embassy on the island, a 5 minute walk from our hotel, with a Union Jack on a flagpole and the words BRITISH EMBASSY written on the gate. Uh?

I've also written down "Zeus in his bovine form", and don't know why.

About 20 minutes later through the most chaotic junction yet we get off the bus outside the giant fuck-off Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which just seems to redefine the word "heft". And turn the corner to reach Arbat, one of Moscow's "must-sees" according to the guidebook we are increasingly unwilling to trust.

I need a piss and there's an outdoor loo; however, you need coins to buy a pass that lets you in. This seems unnecessarily complex and besides, we have no coins, so we go to a pub instead. I have my first Russian beer: Plotnikov ale. I wonder how local it is, while staring out the window and realising we are on Plotnikov side-street.

Down Arbat, the artists are no better than last year. We see some black people, which stands out because Moscow is not cosmopolitan. We're ushered into a tourist tat shop and stare at Putin t-shirts, Putin mugs, and Frank Lampard dolls. Nothing is purchased. Arbat is crowded but, well, a bit crap really. At the arse end we turn into a mystery park between two sides of, of course, another really busy and wide boulevard. There are benches, and there are shelters, but the shelters are not over the benches and don't quite seem wide enough to stand under and get any, er, shelter. Hmm.

It's a bit of a walk but finally we go past that bloody great Cathedral again, over the river, and back to the hotel. Time to chill. The day has not been quite as amazing as the previous day but who cares? Let's do some internetting and then go eat in our local, Strelska. So that's what we do. There is no Russian food on the menu and we get burgers, served with sticks through them and on non-plates. It really is hipster here. There's a massive queue for an architectural talk going on next door; Thursday seems busy.

After a few drinks we figure, y'know what, it's much cheaper just to drink at the hotel, plus there Helen can vape without fear. We are yet to see any other people using electronic cigarettes and the internet told us they might be banned. Mind you, earlier in the day we had also not seen any other men with beards until I started to feel paranoid about it, from which point on it seemed like every bloke had a beard.

Back to the off licence for another 4 beers, and then back to the hotel. There were, briefly, fireworks visble across the way. We sat up doing serious stuff - I played Threes, Helen researched the fall of communism and the IMF-backed march into capitalism, and all the suffering of the Russians over the past 25 years. Both these things got rudely interrupted by the fairly sudden start of a VERY LOUD dance night kicking off in the bar/club next door. Pesky youths!

Oh Stalin, There Ain't No Pleasin' You

Our first full day in Moscow didn't really get going until gone midday. Sure, we had breakfast delivered to us at 9am - some bircher muesli and an activia yoghurt - but after that Helen went back to sleep and I spent 2 fucking hours trying to blog. Writing as much as I do takes a fair bit of time anyway, but that was nothing compared to the fail festival I was about to attend.

First, transferring photos from my phone to my iPad took 3 attempts, because AirDrop is shit. Then once I wrote everything, it wouldn't post - the Posts app just hung on "waiting to submit" and wouldn't let me get back at the text to copy and paste it. I quit the app and restarted it, to be presented with 10s of com.google.gDataServiceDomain 404 errors, but at least I could get back at the text. blogger.com worked OK, but wouldn't let me edit the text below what I could see on screen, and the paste had fucked up the spacing and inserted huge picture placeholders but not the actual pictures. Then my iPad keyboard kept dropping connection every 5 seconds, and I fell off the internet totally. Grargh. After about 40 minutes of rage and anger I managed to get a post of some description up, but the spacing was all still fucked and there were no pictures and I couldn't actually reach my blog (though every other site I wanted to use worked OK). So bollocks, I gave up in a huff and we set off out to actually do some tourism.

We are staying on the nameless island in the Moscow river, the site of the Red October factory and at the end of whch is the giant awful statue of Peter the Columbus. We decided to wander around the complex for a bit and immediately were overtaken on the pavement by a man carrying a sword. We found a small 24hr shop but it didn't sell toiletries, which was a shame as the hotel is somewhat lacking in shower gel and that. 5 beer fridges though. There are bars and coffee and donut places too. There's the nut production area, the packing area, the chocolate area, etc etc. Through to the south edge of the island and there are more bars, a photography exhibition, a gig venue and some restaurants. We mentally bookmarked one for later, based on it being a reasonable price and having a menu written in both Cyrillic and English at the base of the steps which led up to its roof terrace location.

It was bastard hot, again, but without bags and now wearing shorts and a comedy wide-brimmed hat it's survivable. Took some selfies approaching the Cathedral over the bridge and then walked through the gardens towards the Kremlin. Had the briefest of street hassle from a young man with a delightful cheap plastic "I'm a sailor boy" thing over his shoulders who wanted us to get a boat. Maybe later. There is of course nothing in the entirety of Russia that looks remotely gay, certainly not men in sailor outfits nor those in teeny teeny tiny tight shorts and vests, nor the hundred or so construction workers looking like 20% of a Village People convention. Nuh uh.

Up around the edge of the Kremlin through the pleasant gardens with much less construction going on than last year, Helen was enjoying herself but a bit perturbed by how non-bleak Moscow seems. This is not what the 80s taught us about Russia. There's all these people not queuing for bread and there's neat lines of well maintained flowers and there's colours other than grey and that. Damn it.

Past the eternal flame and unknown soldier and into Red Square. It's still not red and still not square. There's some kind of stage and outdoor seating thing being erected as if there's going to be a concert or public execution soon. Probably the former. We take a bunch of photos and then head into GUM, the hefting great department store/mall, with an intention to have a piss, buy some toiletries, and get some lunch. Food was courtesy of Stolovaya 57, the self-service Soviet-style canteen with cheap eats and bad cranberry juice. I had perch and mash plus some beetroot with prunes and walnut, and chicken pate with very hard bread. The chicken kiev with mushrooms, I am told, tasted like a chicken kiev from Sainsbury's might. The whole lot came to the same price as two pints. The English language signs around the place refer to the customers as comrades.

Wandering through GUM afterwards we did the full length of the supermarket in which last year I bought my vodka. The place only sells food and drink, still no toiletries. But back outside past the historic toilets and onto, um, a road whose name I forget, we find first another 24hr mini-mart and then a pharmacy. Also "London Grill" English pub - we didn't go in - and branches of Le Pain Quotidien and Subway. Hurrah! Really we are looking for a place to sit and have a pint, but there don't seem to be any. No, we're not going in fucking London Grill.

Deciding to cut a circle, we get to yet another preposterously large building that seems to be the Residents' Insurance building which is of some vague import. Along the street there is a woman in a cardboard sandwich board, protesting alone about something. Perhaps it says FIVE PROTEINS WITH FISH DAILY, we aren't sure. A stern uniformed lass talks at her and takes photos of the text as two men emerge from the Metro and try to intimidate, erm, both of them? Not sure. Back along the road where last year we had pie and bought Russian dolls, we nip into a souvenir shop and buy nothing.

Back at Red Square we take lots of photos of St Basil's: on its own, dual selfies, and solo shots of Helen. It was a photo of me in front of this place that was the first thing Helen ever saw of me, as it was my profile pic on Guardian Soulmates. So we figure that if we split up, a photo of her in front of it might do her well next time, since it worked for me.

We leave Red Square through the gates built in 1994 which recreate those that were there for hundreds of years before Stalin had them removed to make room for tanks. Helen goes briefly ballistic at the mere sight of a Jamie fucking Oliver restaurant, the fat-tongued Moskvy twat. I point out the Bolshoi ballet building and am pretty much done with the extent of my ability to get around without a map. Next to the metro station which Ian and I used as our pivot point last year there is a place with outside seating so we wonder if they will serve us just a drink.

The first page of the menu is wine. The next 9 pages are all beer. That'll do. I want to order the local Russian dark bread beer but am told they don't have it so settle for an O'Hara stout. It's a real spot-hitter. I get frustrated at wifi which provides only around 5 seconds of connection at a time, and blame the wind. A man walks past wearing a WWE wrestler t-shirt and I want to shout "I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you!" at him, but don't.

We feel pretty much done for the day, tourism-wise. It's been 28c and blazing sunshine all day and we've walked a fair distance. There's a sightseeing bus tour round the corner opposite my last "I know that!" thing in the vicinity, the parliament. We buy the 48hr ticket that lets us get on 2 bus routes and a boat and wait for them to leave. The audio commentary is oddly delivered but informative. The Russian parliament is not a place for discussion, the Bolshoi has a statue of Apollo who is the only sober taxi driver in Moscow, there is a road called Chinatown and no-one knows why because it has fuck all to do with China, double decker buses are great aren't they?, etc etc.

We spend the first half hour on the bus basically retracing the exact steps we've already walked. That there Residents' Insurance building is actually the KGB/FSB headquarters. GUM was once going to be demolished so they could make the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry but the wives of the party leaders persuaded them to keep it as a shopping mall. Ivan the terrible asked the blokes that built St Basil's if they could do it again and they said yes, thinking they were going to get repeat business; Ivan blinded them all so no-one else would get such beauty.

Over to the island (still on the bus) and we do a circle round a park whch used to host "festivities, fist fights, and executions" but is now where "punks, goths, and rockers" hang out. No mods? And then we get off and walk back to the hotel, via the 24hr shop we scouted this morning. After some faffing I mumble "chetiri bud pozhalsta" and the woman behind the counter angrily understands me perfectly, giving me 180 rubles change and using a remote control to open the beer fridge from which we extract the 4 Budweiser I just expertly ordered. This tiny exchange exhausts me.

Back to the hotel and we crack open a beer and do some internet from the blogging sofa. Showers are had and we get changed to go out to the restaurant with the terrace.

The entrance is shut and there's a sign only in Russian, seemingly pointing to a ladder up a wall. Um. Oh wait, no, there are more stairs. OK. The menu at this entrance is also only in Russian but I'm sure that's fine. At the desk they say something to us but Helen cuts it off with "Hello!", announcing our Englishness. The lass goes, ah! and sets off to find the one member of waiting staff who speaks enough English to help us. We're given a table and some menus - the drinks menu is in English, the food menu only in Russian/Cyrillic. Oops.

Drinks order is taken. Yet again the drink I want is not available, so I have a Leffe Bruin (which I can at least pronounce better than them). We stare at the food menu for ages and I try to figure out if any of it is understandable. Some progress is made - I can make out the words for dim sum, soup, shashlik, sushi, and sushimi. We don't want any of those things really, apart from perhaps dim sum. The waiter comes to take our order and goes, oh, your menu is in Russian. What do you want? Helen asks for some kind of chicken with rice and I say yeah, I'll have the same, and also can we have assorted dim sum. He tells us what 5 of the 7 pieces will be but doesn't know the English for the other 2. That's fine. Food is on its way!

It's a really nice place, the Shaktiri terrace. We were out of our comfort zone, unexpectedly, but about to eat and had booze. The dim sum was decent - no idea what was in the blue parcel though. And the spicy chicken in gloopy (not ridiculous) sauce was lovely, with a bit of seaweed that was tiny in size but huge in flavour. Nom. They came and grabbed my plate as soon as it was empty, in fact this seems to happen a lot - no waiting for the whole table to finish, an empty plate must be removed ASAP. While doing so the waitress said somethng at me in Russian and I kinda reacted blankly and then shook my head. I don't know what I conveyed. We asked for the bill soon after, paid, and made our escape back to the Strelska bar where we understand how things work.

Well, sort of. On Tuesday the guy had served us drinks then gone back to juicing a lemon. Hadn't asked for money, hadn't obviously entered it into the till, just juiced a lemon. This time we sat down and waited for waiting staff which I was convinced was the right thing to do. It took a while but I was proved right - English language food and booze menus were brought and I got a Guinness, Helen a huge and strong mojito. Aaaaand relax. Thought about a second drink but then, nah, save the cash - we've got beer back at the hotel, so that's where we went. Lounged around on the blogging sofa until just after midnight: Happy birthday, Helen :)

Back in the USSR

[fuck you Google, fuck you Apple, fuck you Posts, fuck you Belkin, fuck you wifi]

Mmmm. Sleepy. Not been properly awake for even an hour yet after a loong and very refreshing kip after a pretty hectic, full day tbh. I'm sat on what I have dubbed "the blogging sofa" while Helen partakes of even more recreational sleep than I. It is coming up for 4.5hrs later - in local time, but only a mere 2.5hrs in actual time - to what time we got up yesterday.

Our alarms were both set for 5am, but we woke at 4.30am anyway. I guess we were both a bit excited about the journey to come. I'd said we should leave at ~0545 for full lounge usage but we were a tiny bit behind schedule. The checkout at reception did not involve being given a receipt or having to check that the stuff charged to the room had been OK, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Hopefully they will take the right amount from the £120 auth, but I wasn't really in the mood to chase anythng there and then because we had a pod to catch.

The pod was just as fucking awesome as the previous day. An exact 5 minute journey later and here's T5 and a hefty slap on the most smiley face of the "how was your pod experience today?" kiosk. Quick smoke break and a long currrency break, where both staff member and card machine seemed to have not yet woken up for the day. Then a walk to the first class desks, which are at the opposite end of the bloody terminal. Despite already being checked in and travelling with hand luggage only, a G4S employee has to do a passport and visa check when you're going to Russia. We got issued with paper boarding passes and scribbles, and told there was no gate but it might be from satellite B. Boo.

Fast track security wasn't very fast, our progress further hindered by Helen's handbag setting off the x-ray machine for no apparent reason (the bonus swabs came back with fuck all, and she didn't have to empty it or anything).

The 'i' key on this keyboard is really fucking temperamental. Grr.

So, through security and then the million pound door. This is the entrance to the Concorde Room, and the door apparently costs BA a million pounds a year to maintain as compensation to BAA for all the lost revenue caused by first class passengers not wandering through the glorified shopping mall which the terminal proper largely resembles. Even other lounge-goers (to the Club and First lounges) have to trawl past Dixons, but not us fancy pants sorts who are actually travelling in First.

The girl inside gave us the full welcome and told us the spa was already open, so after putting our bags in the cloakroom we went there to try and get an appointment for a massage having failed to do so by email a couple of times. The spa was not yet open nor were they taking bookings. Oh. So, back to the dining area of the lounge for an eggs benedict each and some juice.

By this point Helen is cringeing quite a lot. This is not what travelling by plane is like, and besides, come the revolution no-one will be allowed such elitist treatment: down with inequality! But she is today a brave infiltrator, checking out how the 0.01% live so she truly knows her enemy.

Back to the spa and there are no therapist treatments available at all before our flight, but we can have a magic massage chair go if we want. We do, and spend 15 minutes having our calves gripped by a machine while our back and neck get an undulating beating. For some reason she does not have a choice of relaxing oils to have a sniff from, while I came out literally smelling of rosewood.

We returned to the Concorde Room, where I perched at the bar and ordered a champagne while she spent a suspiciously long time in the loo, soon explained by the fact she had been admiring the original piece by one of her favourite watercolour artists that was in the ladies. She joined me on the bubbles and we went out to the terrace above the riffraff, sprawling on the comfy giant chairs and I wrote yesterday's blog piece.

Sadly my intention to do a bit of a lounge crawl - just to show her the first class lounge - was not going to happen, because (as mentioned yesterday) our gate was actually a far distance away, in satellite B. This meant a bit of a walk to the fuck-yeah-monorail, and a shorter walk to gate B48. There weren't many people around because boarding had been open a while, but there did seem to be a bit of trouble with people's boarding passes and next to the gate was a 747. I got terribly excited that maybe there'd been a very late change of equipment and we'd be travelling in a jumbo's nose but, sadly, it was not to be. Through the check and along the world's longest airbridge to our waiting 777.

I still get a kick out of turning left through the door at boarding. We were escorted to our seats 1E and 1F, and had a couple of intros from some of the cabin crew. Got settled and, why, I think I'd like a champagne please, thank you. Helen descended into monstrous embarrassment at such privilege and opulence and why the fuck does anyone need to travel like this and so on. But the legroom was nice. And the champagne. Oh and here's the pyjamas and amenity kit and today's menu.

I'm pretty sure this first class seat was a slighly newer variant than the one on last year's trip, though not radically different. There seemed to be a bit more room and the in-flight entertainment system was decent. I plugged my phone in to charge and settled into my headphones to watch Pride. Support the miners! See, I can be all left-wing 'n that too.

A new glass of champagne arrived once we were airborne, and then menu choices had to be made. I went for the salmon and caviar to start and an "Arnold Bennett" omelette, whatever that was. Helen had fruit salad and some kind of meat and cheese compendium for main. A croissant came and even now, 24hrs later, I regret not also having a danish. Before all of that came an amuse bouche the contents of which I was told, but totally forgot. Helen reckons it was a glazed fig with some blue cheese or summat. I dunno.

As with most films watched in the air, Pride made me cry, several times. It's a true story but even when I found myself thinking, oh piss off, no way did it actually happen quite like this, my eyes were leaking. Damn it. Thankfully I was able to replace lost fluids quite easily as the guy serving my aisle hardly let my champagne glass get empty. 1E and 1F are good seats for a couple but you're still not exactly sitting close - you can hold hands so long as you properly outstretch your arm. But one of the points of travelling up front is the privacy anyway, so I was happy drinking and watching my film while Helen finally decided to read some of the Moscow guide book. But rather than learn any phrases or figure out anything we should do, she instead just read up on moderately recent Russian history; revolution, revolution, revolution.

I got asked if I wanted another glass of champagne, and of course answered yes, about 30 seconds before the "20 minutes to landing, everyone put yer belts on and yer screens away etc" announcement, so the cabin attendant then pretty much instructed me to down it. Ha! Frankly the staff totally had the measure of everyone; there was a guy who had been in transit through London and largely just wanted to sleep, so they didn't bother him. There were people heading off to do business, and they were not hassled too much. And there was us going on holiday who clearly wanted a bit of first class pampering, and we got it.

After a bit of a taxi and tow, we got to the gate and here was a new one me: arriving at Moscow Domodedovo airport sober enough to actually remember the experience. Last April I had been disgracefully shitfaced and there's a big empty gap between plane and boiling hot aeroexpress train into the city. Well, this year I vividly remember being frostily denied the opportunity to take a piss by loud women, and then the properly surly immigration guy telling me to take off my glasses (twice), asking me where I'd just flown in from (twice) and getting me to sign the arrival/departure form (twice). And then I clumsily dropped my passport and form after he handed them back to me and just generally made an arse of myself. Perhaps not remembering is better.

Loo break, then through customs and into the terminal landside. Hello, Russia. Helen was desperate for a vape but here you have to go through x-ray screening and stuff to enter the terminal so heading out and in again seemed a bit excessive. So we headed straight to the Aeroexpress terminal, bought a couple of return tickets, and hey presto a smoking area next to the platforms. Had to wait 15 minutes for a train and, fuck me it's hot. 28c hot. We don't have a lot of water either..

Train comes and it's boiling hot, as per last year. I swear there's no aircon on the bloody thing. I drift in and out of consciousness for the entire not-very-express journey to Pavletskaya where the real fun begins. I have no recollection of how to buy Moscow metro tickets and the guidebook hasn't helped. We go to a machine and make it talk English at us and buy "2 passes" which comes out as one piece of card. 2 journeys, then. Are these transferrable? Can't remember. To play it safe I queue up to buy another "2 passes" but the machine I use only offers 1 or 5, so I buy 1. Gragh.

The metro is heaving crowded. Everywhere. On the first train there is a man wearing what seems to be a pro-Anders Breivik t-shirt. We have to get Stalin's coffee cup line 5 three stops to Park Kultury, and then line 1 one stop to Kropotkinskaya, from which - according to their own website - our hotel is a mere 5 minute walk. It takes us about 5 minutes just to leave the bloody station and then we are not obviously where the map says we should be. Actually it's kinda worse than that - the map says outside the station we need to skirt round a big ... thing ... it doesn't say what, but it's pedestrianised ... to get to the bridge across the river to the island. And there are two big things with paths round. We each guess a different direction and after consulting the guidebook's map whch doesn't even have the bridge on it, deduce that my guess is right. Down the hill past the cathedral of Christ the Saviour, ringing out its "oi, it's 5pm" bells, we reach the river and see the pedestrian-only bridge tens of feet above us. Ah crap.

Up a load of steps and things are getting serious. It's bastard hot and our bags are heavy and we've next to no water left and nicotine supplies are low. Things look very pretty but energy and mood are both taking a battering. The hotel is really close to the bridge but proves elusive - the address has two numbers, "3/10" and 8, on a road we find easily. There's an 8, but that's not what we want. There's also a 3/10, but that's also not what we want. Another look at the map and we realise the pointer is not actually on the road of the hotel's address. Helen waves a printout at a local who points towards a couple of bars, and then gets his mates to point in the same direction. We approach a building which says 3/10 on it and hello! It's our hotel. Thank fuck.

Venus checks us in, gives us room 6, and takes our passports to be scanned. The room has a balcony with views of the river and the cathedral, but not a jacuzzi bath. The mini-bar price list contains nothing but non-alcoholic drinks and condoms and there is a packet of crisps in the fridge. Some towels have been arranged to look like a swan on our bed and the aircon unit is set to 30 celsius. I shove that down to 22c, mumble a bit, and try to get the TV to work. There's a freeview box and a giant aerial booster but still I can't get any pictures. So instead, I put on a new shirt that isn't drenched in sweat, and fall asleep.

90 minutes later, Helen tries to convince me that sleeping is a terrible idea. It's gone 7pm, we should head out at least for a drink if not food, and not give ourselves jetlag. It takes me about 15 minutes to get out of bed but she's right. So I put on my third shirt of the day, I mean how ridiculous is that, and we fuck off outside.

Turns out we are staying in Moscow's Shoreditch. There's lots of digital stuff around and businesses run out of packing crates and other industrial units. There are men with non-ironic sideburns and laptops and an institute of modern architecture and an expensive restaurant. The hotel itself is pretty much next to 3 dfferent bars which all have roof terraces. We wander first, along the edge of the island to the bridge next to one corner of the Kremlin. Nowhere to eat really leaps out at us and the Georgian place Ian and I were taken to last year is inaccessible on the other side of a really really busy street. We consult an offline map I wish I'd remembered earlier and we spot Pizza Express, hurrah!

Safety first. It's important to have somewhere you're comfortable with so that you can run and hide to comfort if the local experience is too scary. So we had pizza and fuck-yeah Guinness in the basement of a weird shopping mall/apartment complex and everyone spoke English. Ace. Our receipt has the cyrillic for Guinness on it and I've learnt how to pronounce it: you say "Guinness" in a Russian accent.

We got lost trying to get out but eventually emerged nowhere near where we thought we would, back up near the road bridge. Wandered along to the cathedral again and did some proper tourism: took some photos up close against the gorgeous blue dusk sky. It was really really nice, also I got to flex my Russian muscles because we wanted to buy some shit from a kiosk. "dva voda pozhalsta", "gas? nee gas?", "nee gas". Fear my ability to buy two bottles of non-sparklng water. Apparently I am not allowed to make a "nee gas with attitude" joke, so I won't.

Back to the island and for the first time ever (sort of; I'm kinda jealous of Tyler Breeze) wished we had a selfie stick. The Kremlin was all lit up and looking ace along the river, though Helen's camera suffers awful flare from every visible light. Mine doesn't do much better. The slow wander ends at the Strelska bar, where we get a glass of wine and hello, another Guinness. There is free wifi and the internet tells us this is one of Moscow's best pubs. It's a 2 minute walk from our hotel. I think we've done alright here.

PODcasting 101

Gotta type quick. Just had a brief panic when the iPad wouldn't turn on whch lost me a couple of minutes, and the flight I'm about to get on leaves from Heathrow T5 satellite B, which is a good 10 minutes from here. And that's a pain in the arse because "here" is the Concorde Room in T5A, the lounge available only to people with super-mega-fancy-fancy-fancy cards and them what are flying in BA first class. Like what we are, in an hour.

I've thought about podcasting this and have already made a couple of "episodes" which I may or may not publicise, but I'm not entirely happy because they require loads of production and stuff. It's harder to riff when you've got no ability to go back and correct stuff or do it better before publishing. But we'll see. Or hear.

Anyway. Yes. I'm at Heathrow, with Helen, who is yet to dump me in real life but did do just that in my dreams last nght. Apparently in her dreams, I cheated on her. What a secure couple we are, eh? It's her birthday in a couple of days and for a treat I got us a night in the Thistle hotel, attached to T5, sort of, via the pods which link the terminal and business parking lot B. Salubrious it is not, but the way to reach it is by the awesomeness of the pod.

When I first booked it, I said to her, we're staying in the hotel with the pods. And she thought I meant some kind of odd hotel where you crawl into an MRI scanner and kip for the night. But no, these pods are personal monorails. Hear that? Fucking personal monorails. The carriages are standalone and rather than scheduled on a timetable or constantly moving like cable cars, they park themselves and you self-operate: press a button, the doors open, press a button, the doors shut, press a button, you get a recorded voice apologsing for the slight delay, and then are you off on a 5 minute odyssey skirting around the western edges of the runways. Like the tamest rollercoaster in the world mixed wth Docklands light railway. They aren't actually monorails because there's no rail, but I'll let that slide. Suffice to say I was happier than a pig in shit, and even more delighted that Helen too was absolutely loving it - so much so she was disappointed the ride only lasts 5 minutes.

At the other end you walk through the car park, ring a bell to open a steel gate, and through the "grounds" of the Thistle. It's not special on the outside, far from it, all square and grey bricks. Inside is OK, reception were pleasant though did pre-charge me for £120 for things for the room which seemed a bit much. After putting our stuff in 171, which itself was a 10 minute walk from reception but had runway (and pod!) views, we wandered to the bar and perched on their planespotter terrace directly opposite T5. I totally nerded out with flightradar24 and we spent a good hour playing the 'guess where that plane is going' game.

The restaurant opened, so we went inside and ate. The burger was surprisingly nice, as was the fish and chips. The Guinness was OK too, in fact the whole place is definitely worth a £59 stay for all the nerdiness on top (mind you, the pods cost a fiver too - but you can ride them for free if you just go to the car park and back).

Up and at 'em at 5am, we showered and got ready because it was first class o'clock. But what little I have to say about that (so far) must wait, because we've got a plane to catch.

Teed Off

So here's the plan: get up early, have breakfast, plot the day in reverse. What time do we need to be at the airport? How long does the bus to the airport take? What time does the airport bus leave? How long a walk to the bus stop is it? How long does that leave us to Do Stuff?

We actually didn't get up too early, really. Another sugar-heavy breakfast was made even more sugary by the presence of dense and lovely homemade chocolate cake. Limoun was not tormented by any stray insurrection and we sat at the grand table in the middle, since seemingly everyone else from the riad had disappeared early either on excursion or to piss off home I guess.

Oh, hang on, just checked - whirling dervishes are something totally different. The music we'd been treated to in the restaurant was Gnawa music.

We packed our stuff up and went to ask Mohammed what the deal is with checking out. He was fine with us leaving our stuff there, and we didn't even need to pay up yet - despite paying in advance, there is a government mandated tax payable on departure. We told him we'd be back around 2pm or so and buggered off to the bus stop - via a cashpoint which only displayed a blank screen after PIN entry, not useful - for round two of the hop-on-hop-off bus tour, with our 24hr tickets valid until midday.

Back up towards the Ville Nouvelle past the insemination clinic, Cycles Jihad, and the Cyber Parc, the first new stuff of the day came after we went back past the Chesterfield. Having walked back to the Jemaa el-Fna the previous evening there were 12 or so stops of this bus tour we hadn't seen, and without headphones we were reduced to having me read the stuff out from the map in my best fake City Sightseeing voice. "As we proceed down this thoroughfare, one of the widest in Marrakech, visitors to our city often like to pop into the Shell garage for a diet coke on the way to the train station" etc.

Turns out we hadn't missed much on Sunday. We drove down some uninspiring wide roads, saw a fairly impressive train station though no trains, the Theatre Royal, a conference centre, some chain hotels, some parks, the edge of the Jardins de le Menara which would've possibly been worth a visit had it not been crazily hot and with us having no opportunity for a shower or change, and then half hour touring around an area of rich people's houses and posh(-ish) hotels. Again.

Rather than wait for the circuit to complete we jumped off at one of the old city wall gates, being on the edge of the Koutoubia gardens. Across the road and into the gardens we were immediately photobombed and then hassled by Berbers (in great hats). Took a slow wander and sat down for a couple of minutes on the least shady bench we could find, then strolled past the sellers of wooden camels, bracelets, and Adidas wallets to the front of the mosque. The mosques in Marrakech are pretty much the only buildings which reach above 3 storeys, being a 5x1 design which some old fella decided was great and therefore must be used for all mosques in the city.

They are also pretty much the only buildings in Marrakech which don't have a bunch of satellite dishes on top, or mobile phone masts like all the fake palm trees which continued to impress Helen. She took more photos of them than of real vegetation, I think. We were treated to a panorama of satellite dishes from our lunch venue, a cafe balcony back across the square which was yet another entertaining walk. Helen had HORSES! shouted at her by a particularly blunt man, and got scared by a vaguely-too-close encounter with a snake that wasn't being overly charmed or charming. I think I was called Ali Baba another, I dunno, 3 or 4 times and we also had "Fish and chips!" shouted at us, which seems like a slightly worse version of the "Harry Ramsden!" call from Friday and a different kettle of fish/chicken from the "Hey, eat with us, we are better than Nando's!".

Pizza, diet coke, orange juice with cinnamon, virgin mojito and a BIG FUCK OFF ICE CREAM were consumed while we watched the 4 lads doing acrobatics on the ground entertaining the diners though not seemingly having much luck getting any cash for it. Conversation was starting to wane a bit. Was it because we were on the verge of splitting up?

It was about 1pm and really we wanted to get the bus at about 2.30pm. 90 minutes was an awkward amount of time, especially on this hottest of our 4 days. A comedy mis-hearing earlier had made me think Helen was in the mood for buying Big Macs when in fact it was knick-knacks, so we set off to buy some stuff before getting back to the riad. Of the two main drags heading south we'd found the vendors in the western one to be the least trying so headed down that, making a purchase from a non-pushy stallholder of fine kitchenware.

Around the corner and brief encounters with two kittnes whose cuteness cannot be put into words and unfortunately was not pictured, one last Ali Baba and hello, Riad Limoun Amara, time to say goodbye. As we waited for Mohammed to take our cash we snarfed a bit of wifi and saw the flight was delayed, grabbed a tactical piss, and walked our last walk to the Jemaa el-Fna.

Helen's wheely case is more of a magent for attention than even her hair or my ginger face, and is also an added bit of danger to the bike, moped and donkey laden streets. Offers of accomodation and horse transport succesfully dodged we got to the bus stop only 2 minutes or so before the airport bus turned up. So long, Marrakech.

The bus took us pretty much long the exact same route as the hop-on, hop-off tour had this morning except for a diversion to some main bus garage near a huge chunk of the city walls which we hadn't seen before. There was no aircon, a sign told us it was 35 celsius, and an ad told us our return ticket had been worth a good discount on the hop-on, hop-off as well. D'oh!

There was only one other person on the bus, and no others got on. RAK airport is small, with a single terminal and arrivals and departures on the same level. The bus stop dropped us exactly where we'd got on on Friday. By now, Helen was in a really quite poor mood and needed two fag breaks on the 5 yard walk to the terminal entrance. I was trying to gee her up with incessant enthusiasm for the fact we were about to get on a motherfucking plane, but was not having much success.

Handing her a form to fill out allowing us to leave the country didn't do much good either. Morocco requires you give the same information on the way out as the way in, and The Internet had led me to believe the ignorance of most departing passengers would be comparable to those arriving. I steeled myself for delays caused by people in front of us being turned away because they hadn't filled the form out.

Checked in at the desk because there's no online, no mobile boarding pass here. Got our paper BPs and went to the queue into departures, where we experienced delays caused by people in front of us being turned away because they hadn't filled the form out. Though the couple immediately in front of us I felt very sorry for - here was an English couple of pension age, comprising a feisty, in-charge woman and frail, slow man. She was trying to boss him through the procedure and the poor bastard dropped the boarding passes, despite keeping hold of them seemingly his only role; she shooed him out of the way while he stood helpless, unable to bend or even speak faster than 2 words a minute. At the documents check they were informed they needed the forms, but despite a language barrier this steely official did his absolute best to help them. No-one was enjoying this situation and I'm really glad the man gave them a seat, fetched them forms, handed them a pen, etc.

After this check there was security, then passport control, then another police check. Virtually everything was as cursory as the inbound had been thorough. Into the airside area and, hello, shops, hello, duty free, hello, bars selling alcohol. Woohoo! We explored, bought some sweets for our offices, and perched near the expensive bar. Helen was properly down by now, and we sat largely in silence while I blogged. She went to explore, she bought some beer, we ran out of dirhams.

The plane was delayed a bit, but not much. We didn't even try to get into the lounge, as I'd read it was fucking horrible and I also was under the impression it wasn't a proper oneworld alliance lounge, but just one which you can get into with a business class Iberia or BA ticket. I may have been wrong but we'll now never know, and as I type this it occurs to me that the Gatwick lounge was the last hurrah for my dear Cathay Pacific gold card, expiring at the end of this month and impossible to renew. Sigh. I got a lot of good use out of that card, and as of April 1st I have no way of getting into free booze areas when flying BA without actually flying in business or first class. God damn it. :-(

Aaanyway. We played a bit of scrabble, which didn't do much to lighten Helen's mood. I was trying not to try too hard but the going-home-comedown affected and affects her way more than me; as much as she loves flying, she really only loves it when flying away, not when flying home. Me, I just like being in big fuck off metal boxes in the sky. Hell, today me and Mark were discussing flybe flights from London to Inverness which go such preposterous routes as Inverness-Birmingham-Edinburgh-London City. That, to me, sounds like a fucking great way to spend a day.

Alex topped and tailed the trip with yet more good news by SMS while I'm in an airport. Good work fella.

I bought us some more beers on a card with about 20 minutes to go, then at my ill-timed behest we went to the gate too early. Bleh. Managed to find a seat and continue scrabbling, then walked to the plane and... oh. There's a 2yo kid in the row behind us. For fucks sake. Neither of us are big fans of kids at the best of times; locked in big fuck off metal boxes in the sky with them is not even the best of times.

Service was in reverse order to the outbound flight: main box of sandwich and cheese and mousse, then beer, then raisins. Obviously this is because we're flying the route in reverse. I got double food because Helen didn't fancy hers, in fact she really didn't seem to be in the mood for much. My continued attempts to cheer her up carried on failing, but I didn't chase it as much as I might have once done because I know how fucking annoying it can be to be continually asked, are you OK? Are you OK? Is there anything I can do? Are you OK? So we just kept playing Scrabble, and she beat the living shit out of me at it in the second game, after I'd won the first with 'ufo'. What?

Towards the end of the flight things got simultaneously better and worse. Better because Helen managed to source us extra free beer, worse because a group of middle-aged women decided to have a massive pow-wow in the aisle right next to us. They were these upper class ladies discussing at length such things as their high court judge friends' sons, who's anti-semitic and who isn't, how hard it is to learn golf, and how amazing it was that one of their party had actually gone into Marrakech and, wait, hang on, you what? Yes, indeed, it seems these posh women in cheap seats had gone all the fucking way to Marrakech just to play golf but NOT TO ACTUALLY SEE MARRAKECH. Now I can understand going on golfing holidays, but, really, do you go somewhere just to play a course or two and not to actually visit and enjoy the place and surroundings? Really? Not that I should be one to judge someone else's travel habits and preferences, really...

Despite leaving late we landed early, presumably due to some epic tailwind designed to piss Helen off even more by getting us back to the land of 4 celsius quickly. Immediately off the plane I was subjected to a vast, long vent about everything shit from the plane and particularly those bloody women and the revolution was back on. Her solution to avoiding people like that is to bloody well fly bloody easyjet or bloody Ryanair, and I tried to impress upon her my tactic of flying in cabins where it's not even possible to sit next to anyone. We'll see which wins.

A giant queue at the UK border meant we chose to each take a tactical piss in the loos near the Ebola control room. Welcome home. The queue moved fairly quickly, and as I was being seen the woman and her kid next to me were getting some vague interrogation - she had to hand over some papers, and the official asked the lad "what do you call this woman?".

A long walk to the monorail via a fag break, my phone told us the trains were fucked because there'd been delays for ages on the line between Gatwick and East Croydon. Welcome home. Got to the station and there was no Clapham Junction train for a while or so I spunked £1.85 on a diet coke. Welcome home. Down on the platform we learnt that some trains were running so late they were no longer going to stop at Clapham anyway and we had no choice but to wait in the freezing cold for 25 minutes.

Nipped up to the end of the platform to see if we could find a place for a vape, all we found was CCTV - accompanied by a "this is the CCTV room at Gatwick station, ... " announcement just as we got there. Welcome home. Then we saw the big Samaritans billboard while they announced the delays were due to a person being hit by a train. Welcome home.

The schadenforeman was strong. By now I was laughing at basically everything - the cold, the trains, the suicides, the Samaritans, the way it had taken us 90 fucking minutes between landing and getting a train, etc etc. Helen was not quite as impressed but smiling a bit. At Clapham we each had a tight connection, but of course mine was 5 minutes to move either 1 or 3 platforms while she had 7 minutes to peg it with a wheely suitcase along 10 platforms. In the end I actually made it from Gatwick to my flat, once the train had arrived, in less than 40 minutes. Smug Darren is smug. Helen made her service and was home safe about half hour after me.

Country 51, done. 2814 miles in the air. And off out with Helen tomorrow night. :)

Morocco's Modern Life

Woke up on Sunday with a minor hangover. I blame all the hot weather and alcohol, personally. But it was truly minor, and breakfast gave it a solid kicking.

Breakfast for the riad's resident cat Limoun was somewhat less of a pleasant experience. Two strays came in, both looking like they hadn't eaten for months and chomping down the cat food like nobody's business. Limoun gave a vague chase to one of them, and started from a hiding place at another, but didn't really protect his territory or food that much. He did however give Helen oodles of attention, jumping up on the lap and everything.

We left later than we had on Saturday and headed back down towards the ruined palace, where there was a bus stop for the hop-on, hop-off service we'd discovered in our guidebook. I am a sucker for these things as readers of my Greek, South African and Malaysian adventures of 2014 will remember. Really glad they are Helen's cup of tea too. Our plan today was not much more than "head to the stuff that's too far to walk" with a primary focus of going to the Majorelle gardens and the Palmery.

We waited at the stop for a fair while, watching the bustle of the southern medina go by while only suffering the most mediocre, lacklustre hassle from the cab drivers. Of most interest was the virtual fist fight which broke out across the road when multiple taxi drivers almost literally fought over whose fare to the airport one couple were.

The bus came along and I asked for two tickets IN FRENCH, got an answer IN FRENCH, and then responded with some non-random words IN FRENCH. Allez moi! It was 145dh for a not-quite-City Sightseeing open top tour around the main sights of the medina and some gardens, linking up in the modern French bit - ville nouvelle, or Gueliz - with a second loop which goes to that there Palmery and Jardins Majorelle.

Also in the Ville Nouvelle is an English pub called the Chesterfield, and I had made my intentions very clear that I was going to go there and see if I couldn't get a Guinness.

But first the bus tour. Pretty much the first thing which came up was a boring, pedestrianised area which looked like any English town's high street. Could've been in Wycombe or Basingstoke. For fucks sake. After that we were by the main square, the Jemaa el Fna with which we were now well acquainted, but the audio told me that no-one really knows what the name means and it might be "Square of the destroyed mosque" or "Square of death". I like that. It's been there since 1600 and got UNESCO'd up in 2001.

There are several hundred kms of underground canals allowing Marrakech to escape its natural aridity and be full of gardens named after rulers and dignitaries and, er, the Maroc Telecom Cyber Parc where you can, according to the commentary, get a very pronounced "wifi, broadband, or et cetera". It's actually been there since the 1800s but they've given it a really shit name. Helen fell in love with the mobile masts which are disguised as suspiciously perfectly straight palm trees.

The modern bit, as we trundled down Avenue Mohammed V, is pretty modern. You might as well be in a monochrome bit of Paris, especially when you come up to KFC, McDs, etc. We got off the bus at the changeover point and found the Chesterfield for later, stumbled across an e-cig shop useful for emergencies, and cursed my camera's battery dying. There were a bunch of street front cafés around and we chose one that didn't appear to be blokes only. Two sandwiches with chips came, and Helen exercised her French by asking where the toilets were only to get an immediate English reply of "yeah, they're upstairs".

As we left we asked the waiter where the Jardins Majorelle were and he said a 20 minute walk up one road, direct, not left, not right. It was actually about 10 minutes, not very picturesque and the only noteworthy thing being a tourist way over-compensating for being a European in Africa by dressing like Lawrence of Arabia or something. But worse was to come in the gardens as a couple of English lads were wandering around dressed in some kind of north African Islamic pyjamas. Behave yourself lads.

The gardens were great, my enjoyment heightened by the first diet coke I'd managed to source. It's a largely green garden with a fuckton of different cacti, but that's all fantastically offset by the primary colours of vivid blues and yellows and reds of the pots, walkways, and buildings therein. It's also nice and cool because the palm trees are massive.

Inside there is a Berber museum for which we'd paid the supplement and that was well worth it, certainly better value for money than the ancient pulpit steps at the palace. Sadly no photos allowed, but it's a tour through different aspects of Berber culture with each room representing one thing: jewelley, tools and utensils, clothing, religion, etc. I liked the bonkers hats and masculine apparatus, and especially the few exhibits of Berber alphabet which looks much more south American than African.

We sat down by the Yves St Laurent memorial for a bit, actually for longer than we'd wanted because suddenly we were hemmed in by, and I quote, a "massive queue of Germans". After making our escape we waited for the bus while watching a parade of horse-and-cartmanship. The circuit of this second loop was meant to take an hour and go through a really nice route through the Palmery, which is best done by this very bus, or on camel.

The Palmery is a bit shit really. the drive to get there takes ages along big motorways on the edge of the city, and then all you're presented with is a shitload of gated communities for the rich and famous, plus awful theme park-esque things like "Western village" with its sheriff's office and saloon. There are golf courses and big houses and occasional parking areas full of camels and quad bikes, but seriously there is nothing picturesque about the place. The whole thing would honestly have been a bit of a waste of time were it not for the fact that camels are awesome and we parked next to a few and got some OK photos.

On the way back to the ville nouvelle, one of the stops seemed to be purely to allow us all to throw our earphones over the railings to the horde of kids that greeted us.

Back at the centre and it was Chesterfield time. The entrance is kinda hidden as the pub itself is actually on the first floor of a hotel, and once you're inside it's labelled "Bar Anglais". It seemed quite English except for the goddamn lack of Guinness FOR FUCKS SAKE. But we could sit outside by the pool in the shade, so we sat outside near the pool in the shade. Some nuts and popcorn came out and we ate them while shooing away a pigeon - both because we figured we'd annoy the staff if we encouraged it, and because I kept flinching. But then we realised a) the staff were feeding the pigeons b) using iPhone slo-mo camera to capture a pigeon dicking around near our table was awesome.

When Helen and I had turned up we ordered 2 large beers, but while being served Helen had nipped to the loo and the barman had apologised to me that there was only one large beer glass, so we'd have to have one large one small. Expecting therefore to be the only bastard able to drink large beer I was crestfallen when Gavin arrived having been served a fuck-off massive stein of beer. Bah!

Chelsea won the league cup and I spoke at effusive length about the awesomeness of my Pebble smartwatch, but how you have to have your wits around you, recalling a story about Chris texting me "is she fit?" (which I exaggerated into "shagged her yet?" while telling) while on a first date - not with Helen - a while ago. Twat.

Gavin and his missus had a cab booked for later from the square and wanted to eat first, while Helen and I wanted to head back to the hotel, so we all strode along Mohammed V back to Jemaa el Fna as the sun set. It was really really busy and we got a real feel for the transition from the more "safe", Western part that we'd been in as we approached the old medina. The JeF was absolute fucking carnage, busier and crazier than at any point on the previous 2 nights, and we said our goodbyes and battled through the streets back to the riad.

The barber did not offer nor demand I shave. He looked forlorn, knowing I am a lost cause.

Briefly lying down almost turned into a full nap or kip, so I was kicked into action and we went to a restaurant we'd earmarked for lunch on Monday but brought forward. It's only a 5 minute walk from our riad, a place called Dar Es Salaam(?) in which such folk as Winston Churchill, Doris Day and Sean Connery have eaten. Well, now, so have we. We had no reservations so pitched up at 8.02pm - having been led to believe it opens at 8pm.

We were very quickly seated at a table in an already full room, with music in full flow from two awesome guys - one playing a guitaresque instrument and one with rhytmic clappery things who was dancing and rotating his head. Is this a whirling dervish? We haven't looked it up yet. Food and beer was ordered, we plumped for the set menu each and were warned Helen's main would take 40 minutes or so. That's fine.

The starters arrived and filled our table, which could easily have sat 6. We had about 9 different things - spinach, aubergine, some marmaladey stuff, peppers, beans, chickpeas, etc. Everything was lovely, as was the bread we had with it. The band changed, replaced by a group of 3 lads with more instruments and less dancing. Midway through their set the dancers came out, first a plate-of-candles-on-head dancer than a more traditional belly dancer, though a very different performance to the previous night. In this room the diners were largely situated around the edges and the middle had a large-ish podium where the perfromers could show off. The dancers then did work their way around the room, posing for photos but without requiring any money (at least that we could tell). I mean, this was a pretty upmarket place tbh.

The waiter took an awesome photo of me and Helen.

Mains came out, along with a wholly unnecessary apology for how long it took. I had the most succulent falls-off-the-bone lamb tagine with crushed olives in oil, while Helen had a pastilla with vegetables and cheese. They were amazing. The first band came back and everything got a bit participatory, people being given the opporutnity to try on the hat with the whirling bead and fail dismally to move their head properly or clang the clappers right. A group of English girls got involved and afterwards sat down talking about how hilarious it was, while we got a bit shirty about them not understanding the difference between fun and funny. Enough with your "let's laugh at the funny foreigners", you lot.

At some point a text from Chris arrived which lit up on my watch.

Dessert wasn't necessary but we had it anyway, a rice pudding and fruit salad. Patisserie was turned down and we paid and waltzed back to the riad, very slowly, seemingly more full than the previous night. How the fuck did that happen?

Marrakech is great and the end to our second and last full day was fantastic. Felt like we wouldn't really be in the mood to go home the next day.

I was still not single.

Justin Berber

Happy birthday, JB. Apparently.

I slept through the call to prayer on Saturday morning. What a rubbish Muslim I would make. Also I am told there was a cockerel, which I missed too. A bit weird to be on holiday and not wake up and immediately shove on BBC World or CNBC or radio 4 or download a new podcast; and in a room whose privacy levels the NSA and GCHQ would be proud of there was nothing to do except actually get up and do some day seizing.

First, a massively sugary breakfast in the courtyard directly outside our room, and some studious blogging interspersed with a bit of squeeing over the cat, Limoun. And then, some tourism.

Marrakech doesn't really seem to do mornings, as everywhere was relatively empty, calm and quiet compared to the madness of our first evening. We wandered back up to the now empty main square and took a few photos, and despite the sun it was actually a tiny bit chilly - perfect for me, annoying for Helen. We made sure we knew where the booze hole for the evening was and then set off to the souks.

The first two souks were pretty ordinary really. Some fresh produce, which is no use to us, and then some fabrics and stuff which we weren't interested in. But the main souk complex didn't disappoint, this largely covered (with various forms of metal) maze of endless alleys of shop after shop after shop selling leather goods, rugs, food, toys, spices, all kinds of everything. My gut instinct led us somewhere a bit crap at one point, but I made up for it by spotting a tiny artisan courtyard where people were actually making things out of leather there and then, with no hassle from locals, just a working area with residences as well. We weren't really in the mood to buy, just to gawp, and anyway this was on the way to the tanneries.

We were making half decent progress in the correct direction through the maze until, of course, someone gave us directions and then a lad happened to walk the same way as us and made conversation and, hello, he led us to the tanneries, talked a lot about my beard and called me Ali Baba, introduced us to the boss of some of the tanners and promptly disappeared without hanging around waiting for 50dh. OK then...

Boss man taught us some words in Arabic and Berber which we promptly used and then forgot, and walked us around his tannery. Over and over again, he explained how the hide from camels, goats, sheep and cows get shoved in lime and salt for a week, then covered in pigeon shit, then have the hair scraped off, then get plunged in water for a week, and then they're ready to be worked on. Apparently these here Berbers from the Atlas mountains only come down to the city every so often to do this work and sell it. We're on the last day of the big leather festival, before they piss off back to the hills, how lucky! We walked in and around two different tanneries and also got a birds eye view of some others, one of which we were requested not to take photos of because of the strictly religious guy who disapproved of cameras. They were interesting places, nothing like as picturesque as sundry books had led us to believe but also they didn't stink. We had been told about 15 times by now that pigeon shit is "Berber Chanel no.5" and is used because it does the same job but is less dangerous to the skin than ammonia.

Finally we were led into a shop where the most gregarious Berber salesmen in all Morocco sat us down, made his boys fetch us some mint tea, offered me 5000 camels for Helen, and directed us through the most astonishing sales pitch I've ever witnessed. We were shown big floor cushions I want to spell "poofs" with angering the entire gay community, then bag after bag after bag, then a shitload of rugs in various colours and designs featuring patterns representing ice, the high Atlas, the middle Atlas, Berber tattoos, luck, marriage, etc etc. Everything unique, everything much better quality than you'd find in that horrible main square where everything is "China quality", don't you know. Him and his folk have had to come 60-70km down from the mountains! The Arabs don't like them, politically (though personally they get along fine). We Londoners are eternal brothers with the Berber people and there is no obligation to buy anything and, seriously, how many camels for Helen? And I was repeatedly called Ali Baba because of my heroic beard.

We did actually want to buy something, luckily enough, but I felt really guilty his boys had laid out so many rugs when there wasn't a cat in hell's chance we'd buy one. They got put away and we picked a couple of items we did want and then the "democratic pricing" came into effect. More touchy feely, Helen was designated "director of finance" and a written haggle proceeded. He wrote down 1700dh which we misread as 700, so we started at 400dh. Cutting his arm off! 1400! 700? 1200! 1000? OK, 1000. He won't be able to eat but we're such nice people, etc etc.

It was a fair chunk of cash but we'd played into the whole experience and it was fun, and we really did want the things we purchased. But unfortunately the entire thing was soured as we left the shop, the boss of the tanneries magically appeared at exactly the right time and straight out demanded an extra 200dh for the tour he'd given us. No asking if we fancied rewarding him and his workers, just a flat demand for an exact amount of cash. We shoved 100dh his way and told him he was getting no more, and pissed off away back towards the main square.

"Towards the main square" is an interesting concept in Marrakech. We did actually get a bit lost and seemed to reach a very non-touristy area full of roaming youths and football gang graffiti. Refusing to explicitly stop and turn back, I glanced at my phone as if to check a text message and discerned a swift right right, left combo which would get us back on track back towards Jemaa el-Fna. Soon enough we were back in the covered souks with excellent fractured light beams, and a huge congested traffic jam of mopeds and pedestrians and cycles and donkeys. Absolutely crazy and fantastic to try and walk through these narrow alleys, which have been here for hundreds if not thousands of years and have resolutely refused to adapt since the introduction of motorised vehicles.

We totally knew exactly where we were going, and attempted to give off that impression, yet still had random locals shouting "main square, this way" every couple of yards, each pointing in a direction different to the last. No-one was getting our dh this time, we got all the way back just fine thank you very much. The only exception was this guy who tried to direct us to the Jewish quarter. Huh.

At the square we fancied something to eat and drink, so went up to the top floor balcony of a cafe and got some lemon juice plus a cheese sandwich and chips. Very authentic. We could see the Atlas mountains though, which was pretty fucking cool. At this café Helen realised she'd had her e-fag lifted from her bag, or maybe it had just dropped out - either way she didn't have it any more and this was bad. The nicotine cravings were already, ironically enough, stopping her from being able to open the emergency nicotine strip packet and there was some concern that she hadn't brought a spare and might have to get some real fags. Uh-oh.

Back to the hotel, via a vigorous demand from the local barber. Twice now, as he sees us approaching, he's leapt out of his doorway and shouted "SHAVE!" at me. Anyway we went back not just to check on the vape but just to have a break after the morning's madness anyway, and make plans for the afternoon. A recurring theme in our riad is to be serenaded by the night manager's mate practicing acoustic guitar. I'd been sure I'd heard him playing Metallica's Nothing Else Matters but then realised it was probably just the open strings, but now I am sure because he played all the way through to the end of the first verse. It seems to be about the only song he knows, apart from Old McDonald Had A Farm which we'd also had on Friday.

More Scrabble. I won, and was a bad winner. Helen did indeed bring a spare e-cig. Phew.

Now, time to head south. Virtually next door to our riad is a palace called Palais Bahia, a snip at 10dh entry into some really nice gardens with a few stray cats being cute and then a complex of tiled rooms and courtyards with fountains and stuff. Lots of really nice Islamic architecture and design, and vast amounts of photobombing tourists and GOD DAMN IT STOP TAKING PHOTOS WITH IPADS. I hate that.

Back out and heading a little bit further south, we really didn't know until now that there was a touristy area so close to where we were staying. A bunch of restaurants and stuff appeared and then we stumbled almost literally into the metalworking square, which was a proper clang-fest. Back out and around and here's another palace, this time all ruins and birds and cats and sunken gardens and pools. It's a vast(-ish) complex of roofless rooms from a palace built in the late 1500s modeled after something in Granada and it's really quite pretty and peaceful and we were very impressed by the cranes/storks/whatever they were all perched along the tops of the edge walls, as well as the cats wandering around and making rackets.

We wandered in and around each bit - the main complex, the annexe, but not into the museum of photography and visual arts which is somewhat incongruously in the middle of these ruins. We had however paid the extra 10dh to get entry into what we thought was a mosque, but is in fact a little room in which photography is not allowed and which houses a minbar from 900 years ago. A minbar is a stepped pulpit, and it was intricate and lovely and that but not honestly worth doubling the price of entry, certainly not for an infidel like me.

The final corner of the main complex has an upstairs terrace with views over the whole city and the surrounding mountains including them there Atlases again. Fantastic. While up there, I got a text from Gavin who is also in Marrakech with his missus right now - did we fancy meeting them up by the main square this evening? Well, yes, we did.

Left the palace and had a bit of a quiet moan about the girl showing masses of skin - high shorts and a vest on top. Come on, have some respect for local customs and opinion even if you don't share them. Crossed the busy street like a boss, I unwittingly left Helen behind. D'oh! She ran across and we strolled up the street parallel to the main one next to our riad. A brief stop to purchase a camel, we nipped through some side roads to get back to Zitoun el Jdid and popped into the Earth Café 'cos Helen was a bit peckish. A small snack turned out to be a plate so full of potatoes, apples, pastry and other stuff that I ended up having probably more than half of it, washed down with some "yogi tea" which did not taste of bear nor expert zen master. Out the window on this second floor we could see just how awesomely cobbled together the electricity infrastructure of the old town is.

Nipped back to the hotel, being implored yet again to shave, I startled a donkey and Helen laughed her head off at my saying "sorry mate" to it. I can't help being polite! She got changed while we were treated to Nothing Else Matters again, and I found out AFC Wimbledon lost 1-0 away to bloody Hartlepool. Sigh. Loz texted me asking if I wanted some beers and Geoff sent me a photo of a shitload of booze, both taunting me as we had yet to find alcohol in the city - though we were in posession of a flyer for a venue which promised booze and a happy hour from 4.30pm-1am.

Back to the main square, headed to an ATM and stumbled into Gavin and his missus who were just about to brave the souks. Told them where we'd be for drinking and a few minutes later there we were, with wine and local Flag lager on the 3rd floor with a view of the Atlas mountains at sunset. Bliss. The others joined us before we'd even got through our first drinks, let alone the "get one frees" and we sat and yammered on about Marrakech and football and betting and the soundtrack of Imagination (2 songs! Just An Illusion and Music and Lights!) and Kool and the Gang, but early 80s pop-soul-funk gave way to Adele and a desire for booze gave way to hunger.

Down 2 floors to one of the restauranty bits, the price was a bit jarring and having already established that we weren't all hungry we requested the tasting menu for 2, but to share between 4 of us. Oh, and some Casablanca beers.

Out came the food and we all tucked in, to small dishes of about 16 different things - meats, chickpeas, spinach, beans, tomatoes, pickled stuff, olives, just all kinds of loads of things. We all four of us got fairly full... and then the main course arrived. Hurrah! 4 tagines arrived - one full of cous-cous and veg, one just veg, and two with meat in. I think. Just loads of food, no real clue how this was meant to be for only 2 people but nonetheless I volunteered to wolf down everything that the others didn't want.

Belly dancers! I'm always awkward around this stuff, not really finding it particularly sexy and certainly not wanting to join in, have any attention paid to me, etc. Gavin got up and had a slight boogie and the other tables were nothing like as awkward or straight-laced as me. On the second round, a different lass came to our table and placed the big metal plate covered in bottles with lit candles on Helen's head, and she affirmed that it is bastard heavy. A photogapher was following people round and there were notes poking out of the breastwear, so we stayed cheap and took no pics.

Dessert arrived. Bloody hell. I bravely managed a couple of pieces, not sure anyone else tried any. Time to leave while our legs could still carry us, we left and went our own ways - Gav and Ag are staying a distance out of town and had a cab to haggle, something we are really glad we didn't have to do. The streets were much emptier though by no means empty as we stumbled back to the riad, this time the barber was cutting someone's hair so did not insist I shave. I moaned incessantly about feeling so ridiculously full, and we fell asleep sharpish to the sound of Nothing Else Matters.

I have still not been dumped.