Tuesday, 26 March 2012 – Casablanca, Morocco
There sure wasn't gambling going on in Casablanca when I was there twice in the early 2000s. The port city, not the actually setting or filming location of the classic film, was dirty and the inhabitants appeared to consist entirely of unemployed very grumpy young men. However, since the king has instituted a number of West-loving reforms, it appears that the place has gotten a, uh, white wash. It is now a pretty desirable looking North African city! There are rich neighborhoods along the rebuilt Corniche, billboards selling products from home, apparently, and traffic jams that rival Paris.
Actually parts of Casablanca really do resemble Paris as does the street layout in the old colonial section. What doesn't, of course, is the street markets and the New Medina (new is relative here), the Habous (or Jewish) Quarter with its arch covered streets and shady looking pedestrians. Although Paris has a couple of nice big things it in, what Casablanca has is a big mosque, a really big mosque.
The Hassan II Mosque is the second largest one there is. The biggest is in Saudi Arabia in the city of Medina which is harem to infidels. So we had to settle with seeing this one here. The Mosque holds 100,000 folks during the Friday prayer days, and the 210 foot high square minaret is the biggest one of any geometric cross-section, round or square, in the world. We walked bare footed about 2 miles within the building after about that distance with shoes from the nearest place where we could get a picture of us and the entire minaret together. We marveled at the basement of the mosque's huge sink array for the faithfuls' ablutions before prayer.
We concluded our 4.5 hour tour when guide Achmed, a spry elderly gentleman who said we should call him "Scotty", changed to Obi Won Kanobi and mysteriously disappeared about saying something about some force. We concluded the day by sailing out to a fantastic sunset.
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