Here’s Looking at you Kid

After our Sahara adventure and one more night in Marrakech, we were ready to move on to a new city- Casablanca. A coastal city, with one of the largest ports, Casablanca was originally founded by the Portugese and named “Casabranca” meaning “white house”. When the Spanish settled, they renamed it to “Casablanca”. It became world know after the famous Humprehy Bogart classic. Casablanca is the economic city of Morocco.

We took the short, hour long train ride from Marrakech to Casablanca. We paid an extra $2 for first class and window seats (total $14 each). When arriving to our assigned seats, a young man was sitting in one of them. After showing our tickets he moved over. He then said something to another guy in French or Arabic, but the only word I knew was “Americans”. I didn’t think he was happy that he had to move from the window seat. I thought for sure he wasn’t too fond of us until the end of the ride.

John had gone to walk around the train and use the bathroom. He was gone for a bit when the young man said to me in broken English, “ you get off Casablanca?”. “Yes,” I replied. He said, “1 minute next stop”. The trains don’t stop for very long and our bags were high up in compartments above our seats. Oh great, where was John?I walked down the train car halls looking for him. I knew he had his phone because he just played me in a dice game. I texted him through the game app, “where are you??”. No sign of him as the train approached the station. Grr— what to do? The young man tried to help me with our bags and he even looked for John. Finally he was there, right at the very last second. We barely got off in time. That would have been a 3-4 hour detour if we had continued on. I thanked the nice man who ended up really helping us out!

We took a cab from the train station to our hotel on the ocean. It was quite pretty!

We sat outside and lunch while enjoying a nice cold Casablanca beer.

After lunch we headed out to do some exploring. We went to the tallest religious structure in the world-Hassan II, a beautiful mosque overlooking the ocean. We spent at least an hour admiring its beauty and detail. There was a pretty mosque cat with its kitten.We walked all along the shoreline for hours, watching fishermen and surfers.

We joined so many other romantic couples outside the picturesque mosque and ocean

We then walked through the medina a bit. Much smaller than the medina in Marrakech and people didn’t hassle us. After a couple hours of walking we decided to find a bite to eat. John found a sushi place with good reviews on trip advisor. We eventually found it but the place was empty. John was really disappointed to find out they didn’t serve beer. As mentioned in a previous post, alcohol is not so easy to come by in Morocco, even in nice restaurants. The hotels and riads have it but it is much harder to find out in town since Muslims don’t drink. “I just want 1 beer with my dinner while on vacation”, John said. I kind of agreed, as I was wanting a glass of wine.

We walked a bit more not able to find a place that we wanted. We ended up back at our hotel and decided to eat at one of the restaurants connected to it. The manager was really nice and read the entire menu to us in English. John ordered steak medium, and I ordered scallops. Or so I thought. We had some nice wine and olives and then our dinner was served. John’s steak was rare, like bleeding rare, and there was some tough grilled chicken on plate. Chicken? I thought I ordered scallops? Ugh. I can honestly say in 7 years together, I can’t recall any time we sent food back. We felt really bad but we explained the situation to the manager. He cooked John’s steak some more and I told him I’d just have spaghetti.

There are many, many night clubs around the beach in Casablanca. More nightclubs in 1 area than we had ever seen. We were going to check out a place with a cabaret type show but it wasn’t open yet. These places open very late. We were tired and wanted to explore more the next morning before leaving for Rabat.

We slept well and the next morning John was ready before me, so he went to take a walk. About 20 minutes later he came back in the hotel room huffing and puffing out of breath. “Oh my gosh Kins, I almost died!” What?? John explained that as he was walking he suddenly was being chased by guard dogs. He must have trespassed and the dogs were after him. He said he ran as fast as he could and contemplated jumping into the ocean to escape them. He managed to climb through a hole in a fence and the dogs stopped chasing him. Whew- well I was certainly glad he was ok, and glad I missed that experience.

We walked along the beach all morning, checking out the different beach clubs.

Did I mention there are cactus all over Morocco? SO neat seeing cactus next to Palm trees!

The Moroccan King and his family are very well liked and their pictures are everywhere

Love all the pretty kitties everywhere in Morocco!

It was a sunny 75 degrees, but not the “season” for the beach clubs. We couldn’t imagine what it would be like during season. Crazy I’m sure! The beach clubs were all really nice!

On our cab ride to the train station, our driver pointed out some large mansions and told us they belonged to the Moroccan mafia members.

We boarded our train to Rabat without issue and enjoyed the 3 hour ride. The trains are pretty clean with big,comfortable seats. The bathrooms are not so clean however. When traveling these are just things you learn to deal with. When you gotta go,you gotta go. We have learned to always carry tissue/ toilet paper with us, as it is common in other countries to have bathrooms without toiler paper. It is also common to come across squatter toilets. I hated these in China; I hated them in Japan and I still despise them in Morocco. Anatomical speaking it is not as easy for women to use squatters as it is for men. A man definitely invented these. There is often urine on the edges and they smell. I have “held it” many times, for extended lengths of time, due to really yucky squatters. I have an internal rating system for public bathrooms now. If I can manage I will wait until it is at least a 3-4/10. This means I don’t have to hold my breath and there is not visible urine etc around the squatter or toilet. I have gotten really pretty good at squatting though, I must say. If there is indeed a toilet seat, the bathroom gets a rating of 4 or above.

Besides bathrooms, there are other things one learns and must roll with when being a world traveler. You have to step out of your comfort zone. You have to realize things aren’t going to go the way planned and you must be patient. You must also be tolerant and can’t worry about germs. People cough- people sneeze. You can do your best to keep your hands clean with sanitizer ( we always have on us) and washing often, but you can’t avoid germs. It is a fact of life. We take probiotics daily and John takes vitamin c/ airborne each morning. I do think there is something to it. The nurse at the travel clinic before our Asia trip, told us that those who take probiotics are significantly less likely to pick up common colds/ sicknesses.

Another important thing when traveling, (especially for extended periods), choose you travel companion wisely. Just because you like someone does not mean they will be an ideal travel companion. Luckily for me my hubs and are very compatible in that way. It helps that we live together so we already know each others habits, moods etc. John and I are great travel companions. Traveling can be stressful at times, and trust me when I say, we both have our “moments”. Neither of us have “moments” that last too long and we are generally able to laugh it off. I’m definitely a little slower in the AM, so John has learned to go down and get breakfast or coffee, and not rush me. John on the other hand, gets “hangry” when his blood sugar is low. He typically needs to eat every couple hours, whereas I can go for awhile. I try to keep snacks on me so that I am prepared for his hangry moments.

We arrived in Rabat and decided we could walk to our riad.

As we exited the train station we immediately noticed protests in the near distance. Oh boy! We walked, avoiding the protest area ,and noted many military guards and riot gear/ busses. We also immediately noted the modern dress of many people in Rabat. Girls were wearing jeans and even some had heels. We made it to our beautiful riad Kalaa, and were greeted by the French manager. She said she lived in Morocco due to her husband’s job. She explained not to worry about the protests, as they go on all the time since Rabat is the political capital of Morocco. In each city of Morocco there is military and police presence. They always walk in 3’s- with 2 military officers in camouflage uniforms on either side of a man in a blue uniform,. I tried researching this, but had yet to find anything.

We unpacked and checked into our room and riad. Really beautiful place.

tea time!

We of course were given some tea and cookies. We went out to explore this coastal town. We walked all along the water and through the city.

More beautiful doors!! ( see previous post about Morocco doors)

We saw some beautiful government buildings and officials’ homes, as well as the palace where the tomb of Hassan II lays.

We enjoyed walking the medina here. Although it was not as traditional and chaotic as in Marrakech, it was refreshing to not be harassed by locals.

We walked and walked to get to the ancient Roman ruins, but as we arrived it was 5:30 and they were closing. We didn’t know they closed at that time and were kinda bummed, but decided we would return the next morning.

Thanks to a recommendation from our hotel, we found the most amazing place to have dinner that night. Not knowing what was behind the door, we knocked. It was so incredibly beautiful inside! I felt as though, once again we had gone back in time thousands of years.

the cool all red bathroom

The restaurant was not just Moroccan, but African. We had a delicious meal, starting with pastilla stuffed with pigeon. Yes- pigeon! My dad asked “ like NYC pigeons”? I replied, ‘no dad, Moroccan pigeons”…haha. This was our first time eating pigeon. It was so good! The pastilla is a pastry type dish with meat inside and powdered sugar and cinnamon on the outside.

For our main course we both had veal meatballs- so good!

The next morning we got up early and set out to see the ruins we had missed the day before. We loved walking around and taking pictures. Of course there were sweet kitties everywhere.

Before leaving Rabat we did some shopping in the medina. John and I both got some new clothes- 2 shirts for me for $3. They even made a little dressing room —