When I booked our flight, I thought nothing of a 5:30 pm departure. Flights to Europe always leave in the evening. What I realized as we boarded the plane is that 5:30pm is barely evening. Overnight flights never yield much sleep, but it is especially challenging when it is only 7:45 pm after dinner and you realize that you need to be thinking about sleep since the flight will be landing in 4 hours. We landed in Paris with so little sleep that we were all rather delirious. Within seconds of our 2nd flight leaving, we were all sound asleep.
Melissa had the genius idea to book her hotel in Casablanca for an extra night so we had a place to store our bags and, perhaps more importantly, we were able to shower after the flights. True genius!
We had a nice lunch at a strange restaurant that served half a dozen dishes from half a dozen global cuisines, then we walked over to the Hassan II Mosque. It’s the largest mosque in Africa and the only one (at least in Morocco) that non-Muslims can enter. Unfortunately, we missed the 2pm tour and it seems that is the end of the visiting hours so we just walked around outside and enjoyed watching the surf for a bit.
We headed on over to the Marché Central, which the book describes as a bustling market. Well, market it was, but more of a wholesale type with fishy and produce stands – not really what we were looking for. At this point, it is 3:00 and we are done with Casablanca’s major sites. We stopped for a coffee and people-watching while we sorted out our next steps.
We scrounged up 2 more things to see (United Nations Square and Casablanca Cathedral), and made a plan to kill time before heading to dinner and then the airport.
Sacré-Coer was the highlight of Casablanca, and we didn’t even get to go inside. We had a surprisingly delicious dinner at a French bistro, then we left for the airport for an 11pm flight to Errachidia. The Casablanca airport isn’t large, but holy cow is it confusing! Our flight was domestic (terminal 1), but it seems that terminal 1 is bisected by terminal 2 because we walked from 1 toward 2 to get to our terminal 1 gate.
Overall, we found Casablanca to be full of stuff, but none of it was anything we wanted to see. It’s not a pretty city (although it has a few pretty buildings here and there), nor is a particularly historical city. It’s a chaotic, loud, somewhat dirty city, sort of along the lines of Nairobi, and we were perfectly happy to be heading out in short order. It’s a “can’t really recommend” city. I have confidence that the rest of the trip will be much better, so there’s nowhere to go but up from here!
Vacation Days 