Morocco: Casablanca

Happy Thanksgiving!  We are grateful for the ability to wander the world and for all of you who wish to come along. We promised you the good, bad, and ugly. There will be a little of everything in this Thanksgiving post today. 

We arrived late in the afternoon a few nights ago to spend 3 nights in Casablanca. We were thrilled to walk into our room which felt luxurious compared to some recent stays since leaving Marrakesh. The first item on our agenda after checking in was to find a FedEx to ship home some gifts we’d purchased.  The office wasn’t too far, so we chose to walk since we’d been sitting in a van for 3 days. Google Maps routed us through an ugly, dirty, and very smelly part of the city.  This didn’t help our first impression of Casablanca at all. So far, this wasn’t the romantic seaside city people had talked it up to be. In Rountree fashion though, we decided to hold judgement until the end of the stay. 

Casablanca is like any large city. It’s population is 3.84 million, similar to Los Angeles. Of course, like LA, there are safe and unsafe areas, filth, homeless, graffiti, and crime.

Hassan II Mosque

We took a familiarization tour the morning of our first full day. The tour provided us entrance to the Hassan II Mosque.  This is the only Mosque in Morocco which non-Muslims are permitted to enter. It was breathtaking. Everything was hand crafted from the carved plaster, marble inlaid mosaic floors, wood ceilings, and the chandeliers. There is no air conditioning, so the roof retracts in the hot summer months to promote air flow through the open arches above all the doorways. Construction took six years to complete with three crews working around the clock seven days a week year round to complete the mammoth project. The majority of the materials used in its construction came from Morocco.  

When Muslims enter the Mosque for prayer, men and women enter through separate doors and must first wash their hands, face, and feet three times in the ablution room, or in the fountain outside the Mosque. Men and women also pray in separate locations. The men on the main floor and the women in the balconies above. 

This is the largest mosque in Morocco and the third largest (height and capacity) in the world. A maximum of 105,000 worshipers can gather together for prayer: 25,000 inside the mosque hall and another 80,000 on the mosque’s outside ground.

Rick’s Café

Opened March 1, 2004, the café was designed to recreate the casino/bar made famous by the 1942 film Casablanca.  The location and film name was created after the producer and director of the movie dined in a riad which is now home to Rick’s Café. The interior did not match the movie set, but the meal and service was delightful. We’d rank this as the second best meal we’ve had on this journey so far. That honor is still held by La Trastienda in León, Spain.

Hotel Issues

We don’t want you to think everything is always so wonderful when we are traveling. Sometimes issues arise causing frustration. On this leg of the journey our hotel in Casablanca was the thorn in our side. The saga began right at the start on by our first full day as we were locked out of our room after breakfast. Our card wouldn’t work and multiple resets by the front desk didn’t resolve the problem. We got the manager involved who had maintenance break in to the room while we were out on our tour, but without necessities we’d planned to take with us (like TP and sunglasses). When we returned the key worked. No biggie, these things happen. 

But then on day two, when we returned from breakfast we were again locked out of our room in the same manner. Once can be dismissed, but twice? I was a bit annoyed since Rex and I planned to get some work done that morning and now we couldn’t. After escalating to the manager again, they had to break into the room once again and offered to move us to a “suite” which wasn’t as nice as the room we already had.  However, we appreciated the move and hoped it resolved our lock out problem. We are grateful for their attempts to work things out but overall customer service is not this hotel’s strong suit. 

Morocco vs Croatia World Cup Match

We watched the Morocco/Croatia opening round match with lots of locals and some fellow travelers in our hotel. The action was exciting, but the match ended in a 0-0 tie, much to the excitement of the local crowd. Apparently Morocco was the underdog and the tie was a good result for them. 

Finding gratitude

All in all, our experience in Casablanca was just okay. The hotel rooms themselves were nice, but hotel service was lacking for the rates they charge. Hopefully this will improve in the future. We likely will not return to Casablanca, and if we do, we wouldn’t stay at this hotel. However, Morocco as a whole (especially Marrakech) we will revisit for sure. 

We are grateful to have our health, family & friends, ability to travel the world, food in our bellies, a roof over our heads every night, and so much more. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!