Morocco Trip Part 1: Casablanca

With Stephen's 30th birthday fast approaching, I asked him whether he would rather go on a surprise holiday or have a big party.  Unsurprisingly, it being Stephen, he picked the surprise trip.  Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to find somewhere cool to take him.  I struggled trying to find a location that was suitably cool while also being close enough for an extended weekend trip - until I saw an advert from Air France on a website, quoting cheap fares to the north of Africa.  Hooray, I thought, and booked flights to Algiers for a 5 day holiday.

I started looking up accommodation, and realised my error - I had thought that Algiers was in Morocco, but it  was actually in Algeria (who'd have thought).  I managed to call quickly enough and cancel the booking - rebooking the flights to the correct destination of Casablanca (which is actually in Morocco) this time.  Luckily they cancelled the booking, or this might have been a very different blog post!

The next problem was clothing.  Morocco being a Muslim country, I wanted to respect the local customs, so I took a number of trips to cheap local stores looking for appropriate clothing - long pants, long sleeved shirts and tunic-style tops that cover your hips (headscarves are optional, but most travel sites recommended wearing your hair in a ponytail).  It was tough to find appropriate clothing, considering that the forecast for Morocco was 40 degrees and it's coming up to winter in Canada - plenty of long sleeves, but all designed for -10 degrees.  I managed to scrounge together enough clothing in the end and hide it from Stephen - and then it was time to pack and go!

The custom is for men to wear long pants in Morocco as well (apparently wearing shorts is like walking around in your underwear), so my packing instructions to Stephen the morning of the trip gave the game away - I said to pack long pants and no shorts, but no jumpers.  When we got to the airport in the evening, I asked if he could guess where we were going, and he suggested that if it needed long pants but not jumpers with absolute certainty, it must be for religious rather than weather reasons, and therefore he thought we were going to Morocco (I knew I was dating him for a reason - smart man).  

Once I confirmed that we were going to Morocco, we were both a bit nervous - I had been so busy organising the trip that I hadn't really had a chance to think about the cultural and language issues that we were about to experience, and Stephen had only just found out.  We caught our flight to Paris, changed into appropriate clothing, and caught our flight to Casablanca, arriving in the early afternoon local time.  

Nothing ever goes quite to plan when you are in a strange place.  I had plans for getting from the airport to our hotel - the airport train should take us right there - but we discovered while purchasing tickets in our best French (most people in Morocco speak French and Arabic but no English) that the airport train didn't actually go to that station - but it went to one 3km away that we should be able to catch a taxi from.  We quickly discovered on the train that there were no stop announcements, and very few signs on the stations.  We figured that our stop would be the last one, so we hopped off 45 minutes later when the train stopped... in the middle of nowhere, 10km past our hotel.  Stephen managed to negotiate a taxi fare (with me translating for him), and we finally made it to our hotel around 4pm, exhausted and ready for a shower and some sleep.  All things considered, we didn't do too badly for the first mistake of our trip.

The next day, we headed out to see the local sights.  Our first stop was Casablanca's main attraction: the Hassan II Mosque, of which we took so many photos that it requires its own blog post (to come).  We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city.  

Casablanca is the biggest city in Morocco, but it doesn't actually get that many tourists - it's more the business hub.  Most of what we saw was beautiful buildings.

Stephen really liked the cute little balconies on this building.

Even the local Christian cathedral manages to look vaguely Moorish.  No giant cross, for some reason.

The main square was a nice garden surrounded by government buildings, mostly empty of people.

You would have thought that we were the only tourists in the city or something.

We also visited the tiny local market - here's a swordfish just lying there dead in the open.  Ugh.

Apparently they eat turtles too.

Next up, Part 2 (where the good photos start) - the mosque!