For those of you who are geographically challenged, Morocco is the northwest corner of Africa. On a clear day you can see Morocco from Gibraltar.
The population of Morocco is ~35 million, and the area of Morocco is ~172,000 square miles, just slightly larger than the state of California . Casablanca is the largest city, ~3.4 million people, so 1 in 10 Moroccans lives in Casablanca. The capital of Morocco is Rabat where we will visit tomorrow. Morocco is geographically a very diverse country which is one reason we are interested in visiting. It has an extensive coastline on both the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. It also has extensive mountains, with the elevation of the highest peak Toubkal being 13,671 feet (4,167 meters), or about 20% taller than Oregon's Mt. Hood. The far eastern part of Morocco is in the Sahara desert, where sand dunes can be as tall as 300 meters (1000 feet). Morocco is also diverse culturally and has a rich history - more on that in another post.
The introduction meeting for the tour was not until evening, so we had the day to explore Casablanca on our own. After breakfast we took a taxi to the Hassan II Mosque. It is the third largest mosque in the world, and can accommodate 25,000 worshipers, 20,000 men on the main floor, and 5,000 women on the second floor. It is named after King Hassan II, and was completed in 1993. In addition to the worshipers inside the mosque, an additional 100.000 can pray in the courtyard.
Before going to the mosque, we went through the adjacent museum to learn about the construction. The museum has many examples of the elaborate decoration from inside and outside the mosque. Here are a few photos of the items displayed in the museum.
We then went to visit the mosque. Here are some photos from the outside. From a distance you can see some of the detail, but the closer you get the building reveals more and more exquisite detail.
The inside of the mosque was also exquisite, not to mention being huge.
This is part of the cleansing stations in the basement of the mosque where worshipers do their ritual cleaning before going upstairs to pray.
Below is the view from the edge of the courtyard. The mosque is built on a point, with part of the building jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.
After leaving the mosque, we walked through part of the ancient medina, with its maze of narrow alleyways, and small shops selling all manner of goods and providing just about every type of service you could need. You could easily get lost in the medina and not find your way out for hours. Thanks to Google Maps, and a little foresight to download an offline copy of maps for all of Morocco navigating was easy. Every few minutes I would pull out my phone to see if we were generally headed in the right direction, or needed to course correct and take the next right or left alley.
Our goal was to make it to Rick's Cafe for lunch. If you have ever watched the movie Casablanca, you would know about Rick's Cafe. Just forget that the movie was filmed in Hollywood, and there was no Rick's Cafe in Casablanca back in WWII. 😃 Rick's Cafe did look like it could be authentic from the movie, just smaller in scale. And they had great food. And beer.
After leaving Rick's we wandered back into the medina for a while.
After leaving the medina we wandered through a more modern part of town to get to the starting point on a recommended architectural highlight walking tour in our guidebook. Here are a few highlights of that section of the day.
Here is a friend Karen met outside the Place Mohammed V square.
Finally after 6 to 7 total miles of walking we made it back to our hotel.
Hope Wi-Fi will be better later in the trip. If not, these blog posts will be much shorter and fewer pictures. It was a struggle to get this to load.
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