Casablanca, Morocco!! 09/09/10

The overnight from Spain was a long night! I spent most of the night getting my blog up to date - which was a success! But now I have SO much to say about Morocco. We pulled into port around 12 PM and spent the afternoon having to sit through a bunch of meetings and getting a debriefing from diplomats about what to expect in Morocco .. ect ect. I was so antsy during the meetings and decided to head out early to go up to deck 7 to see the ship pull in. The ship was cleared and we were allowed off around 2.
Casablanca is a very VERY industrial & dirty port. Where we docked was about a 20 min walk to the main gate for the city. Luckily we had a shuttle that took us from the ship to the entrance but it only ran from 9 AM to 9 PM.

I spent the first day exploring Casablanca with a group of us. We headed off to the Hassan II mosque right when we got off the ship. The mosque was about a 15 min walk - right away we started getting the stares, honks & people even pulling over to say something to us. Trying to navigate through the traffic & crossing the streets was an adventure in itself!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_II_Mosque

Once we arrived to the Mosque the long, hot walk was worth it. It is gorgeous! Right next to the mosque there is a huge concrete wall where the locals jump off into the water below. There were tons of people hanging out there and jumping into the water below. I went over to the wall and sat on it next to some of the locals to get a picture of the kids jumping in and about a minute later a HUGE wave came crashing RIGHT ON ME!! I screamed and we all ran from the wall, laughing. Even though i was soaked I was dry in about 10 mins because it was SOOO hot out. The group of us hungout at the mosque and waited for the prayer to call - we were going to go into the mosque but there was sooo man SASers just standing at the entrance looking foolish so we stayed away and just sat on the steps watching the people around us. 

After the mosque we decided to try to find the markets in the medina (old town) which was another adventure. We all knew the general direction it was in but didn't really know WHERE it was. We headed in the general direction and asked for directions a few times and ended up stumbling upon it. This is were we got our first taste of what it meant to be a tourist in the markets. Every which way you looked someone was saying "Hello, come look in my shop" ..."I give you good price" .. "come look! come look!". None of us bought anything that day because we were heading to Marrakech the next morning and that is where the REAL markets are... One thing that happened and there were a lot of comments to the all females along the way was a comment I got form one of the locals in the markets. He said "Hey blondie how about 3000 an hour" I didn’t say anything or even acknowledge what he said but i was shocked!

For the rest of the day we wondered the city then headed back to the ship for dinner & went out again. I ran into a different group of people along with Chris & Eloise and we all went to a hookah bar for some shisha, orange juice & mint tea. The orange juice is AMAZING!!! (gen remember what I said about it’s a good port if there are oranges haha!!) And the mint tea is soooo good! I got it every day, multiple times a day .. They call it Moroccan whisky since alcohol isn’t too big in Morocco. There really aren’t many bars in Morocco either – I didn’t see one (besides in hotels ect).

That was pretty much my first day in Morocco & I had a ton of fun! Just keep in mind if you ever go to Casablanca DO NOT base the whole country on that one city. It’s really dirty & very industrial so make sure you get to other cities like Marrakech or Fez (although I didn’t make it there) So you can get a real Moroccan experience.

I'll blog about the rest of my days soon. It's so busy back on the ship with classes and all! But I'll try to keep my other posts shorter :P & remember to email me!!! HLCOOPER@semesteratsea.net

Miss you all!