Casablanca

When we woke up, I could not figure out why it was so dark. Later in the day, we realized it was probably heavy smog which blew in and out all day.

Casablanca is a busy port city. We decided not to do a ship excursion so we walked off, through the port and got a taxi into the centre of town (or so we thought). Our driver got to a Medina (market), showed us the correct direction to walk to get to the mosque and said it was about four blocks. NCL does not provide any maps for passengers (a serious mark against them) so we headed off with very little idea of where we were going. Tory and Roger had been here once which helped.

We walked through the edges of the market area. Our impressions were that there were lots of men of all ages standing around; we saw very few women and they mostly wore hijabs, long sleeves and pants; there was lots of garbage on the streets and the strawberries were enormous!

This part of the city was predominately browns and greys (walls, sidewalks, clothes) with an occasional vivid splash of colour: a wall mural, or the carts of fruit. We walked through this area, dodging cars, bikes and handcarts to reach the large square in front of the mosque.

Tory tells us that this is the second largest mosque in the world. It sparkled white and turquoise against the blue sky. We had all been in large mosques before so we decided not to pay for the tour.

Shortly after, a large bank of smog blew in and as we were all starting to feel if (stinging eyes, sore throats, coughing) we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the ship. In retrospect, we agreed that we should have paid for an organized tour...oh well, lesson learned. We later heard that a sandstorm had blown in from the desert. Smog? Storm? Hard to differentiate.Read more