What an interesting city! Full of
life, a little be grimy and yet it held my captive with its familiarity. Seeing
signs in Arabic took me back to the Saudi days.
Our tour guide, Hassan, was a 77
year old guy who clearly LOVED his country and LOVES the new King - Mohammed
the Second. Apparently this new king is cleaning up the place, and put a stop
to the political corruptness that existed in Morocco for decades. He's build
schools, new highways, housing for the poor, and the list goes on.
Casablanca is apparently named
because the Portuguese who landed there several hundred years ago had a law
that all the houses had to be painted white - thus casa / blanca - white house.
Three languages are spoken here and can be found in every sign: Arabic, English
and French. Casablanca is Morocco's
largest city and third largest in Africa.
Our tour started with a 90 minute
bus trip to Rabat - the diplomatic capital of Morocco. Here we got to view the
Royal Palace and the Royal Mosque. Oddly the King wasn't taking any visitors so
we didn’t get to see him. The palace was beautiful from the outside, I could
only imagine the opulence on the inside.
Back in the bus - after a quick
gross bathroom break - and off to Chellah, and ancient Phoenician city. Ruins
still stand showing the layout of the city. And the unique point of this city
are the storks that live there each year. Hundreds of storks our guide said…I
saw maybe 20. Maybe some got lost in the conversion from dollar to Euro.
Back on the bus and off to see
the mausoleum of Hassan II- the grandfather of the current King. His mausoleum
was paid for by the monarchy and "not by the people" our tour guide
said. Naturally I was trying to figure out how a King got his wealth if not by
the people. At any rate, it was grand and beautiful and everything I'd expect a
mausoleum of a King to be. Inside a man sat in mediation and read from the
Quran at each prayer call.
The other interesting part of
this mausoleum is the people of Morocco decided to build a mosque here too.
Only they never finished it. A tower still stands that's only partly built and
the pillars of the mosque stand showing the layout of what the mosque was going
to be. Hassan, the tour guide, said they had no plans to build the mosque now.
Back on the bus and we headed to
the Kasbah - I'm sure I wasn't the only one singing "Rock the Kasbah"
the entire time through this lovely little town on the hill. Casbah, apparently
means fortress, and the wealthy lived here. We were accosted by women who
wanted to paint henna tattoos on our hands for "free". I was quick to
brush them away…I didn't know where their henna had been.
Lots of cats here. I stumbled
onto a black and white kitty that I needed to bring home. Janet said no.
The houses were painted white
with blue half way up from the ground. Apparently blue is for luck. And almost
every door had the hand of Fatima on it - which also meant luck. I'm still
wondering why these people needed so much luck.
Back on the bus and it was time
for lunch. Hassan promised us delicious
and filling food. I was skeptical because of past lunches on the cruises where
they were mediocre at best. And this lunch would be the same.
It started with this pica de
gallo-esk salad. It might have tasted good, but the tomatoes had an odd texture
to me. The bread was good. This was followed by over cooked chicken in a
yellow, butter sauce. I surmised the yellow to be turmeric - which to me isn't
overly flavorful, but pretty.
The table had a bottle of wine on
it which we shared with a couple from Sweden. They weren't really talkers - so
Janet and I drank the wine and amused ourselves with people watching. By this
time a feral cat had wondered in and I found myself feeding him from the
chicken on my plate. He wasn't nearly as picky about his food. And by the girth
of him I could tell he didn't lack of food.
This course was followed by a
plate full of couscous. The couscous was also yellow and had chunks of beef in
it - slow simmered, and delicious beef. The veggies on the plate were
completely over cooked and gross. In fact, I wasn't sure what some of them
were.
The dessert course were sesame
cookies and fruit. The fruit wasn't cut up however. It was full apples,
bananas, and oranges. I peeled and orange and shared it with Janet. It was
sweet and really tasty…considering the rest of the meal was questionable.
Back on the bus and we stopped at
a store for shopping. Apparently all tourists like to shop. I couldn't help be
wonder if Hassan had a deal with the shop keeper, or if the shop keepers were
family. He seemed overly excited to let us "shop" here. We bought nothin.
Back on the bus - are you seeing
the trend here? And we stopped at the "historic" (I put that in
quotes because it's only 8 years old) Hassan II Mosque - the 7th largest mosque
in the world. It holds 100,000 people 25,000 inside and the rest outside - so
again I'm questioning the "holds" part of the story.
Still the mosque was beautiful. I
wished we could have gone inside, but it's only opened to the public once a
week and today wasn't that day.
On the way back to the cruise
ship, we drove base the famous Rick's Café from the movie Casablanca.
Apparently a woman from Boston owns it now and it seats 250 - though it sure
didn't look that big from the outside. Reservations, according to our tour
guide, were almost impossible to get. I'm guessing they were somewhat possible
since people were eating there.
We finally made it back to the
boat and just in time for dinner. Tomorrow is a sea day and I'm pretty happy
about the resting and doing nothing part of that. Janet and I have another wine
tasting…so that'll be fun.
0 comments:
Post a Comment