Sun Oct 18 Reading TripAdvisor about what to do in Morocco, many positive comments had been made about Marrakech but not so many about Casablanca. Our friends Bill and Judy on BeBe had made train and lodging reservations for three nights in Marrakech, bypassing Casablanca. Looking at the train schedule, you have to go through Casablanca to get to Marrakech, so we decided to stay one night in Casablanca and decide its merits on our own. We took an early morning tram ride (station is a 10 minute walk from our boat) to the train station which is right next to one of the tram stops and caught the 0830 train to Casablanca. It was about a 1.5 hour train ride and we wanted to arrive in time to check into our hotel and wander over to the Notre Dame de Lourdes Catholic Church for the 11:00am mass. We arrived at the Casa Port train station and it was just about a 10 minute walk to our hotel -very near the station. We had booked at the Best Western Hotel Toubkal. It was a very nice hotel with very helpful staff as we were allowed to check into our room early and leave our luggage there. The hotel also had good Internet as we found out later that day. We walked from the hotel to the tram station and rode it close to the church. We had about a 15 minute walk on either end of the tram ride. It was a cool day. We got to the church about a half hour early, giving Virginia plenty of time to take a few pictures and choose a seat for us that had a good view of the choir -the main purpose of our visit. The music sung during mass was reported to be a blending of Roman Catholic hymns and African rhythm. This is a modern church, built in 1956, and stands out not only because of its architecture but also because it towers above the surrounding structures. The massive concrete hood over the doorway and the gorgeous stained glass windows are striking and the music was wonderful. They sang in French but Virginia couldn't help humming along. The harmonies were so rich. During some of the more up-beat pieces, they each held a yellow and a white small square handkerchief/scarf and swung them to the beat. Click here for a youtube video of one of the pieces.
We grabbed a quick Moroccan sandwich at a street café and headed towards the old Medina area. Casablanca is Morocco's largest city and chief commercial port. Casablanca is considered the economic and business center of Morocco, while the national political capital is Rabat. Only here for one night, so we had to compress our sight-seeing. Fortunately we had mapped sights into tight geographical areas. The church was near an attractive park, the New Medina, and the Royal Palace. After lunch it was a short walk through the nice green park where we saw some children playing soccer. Another short walk brought us to the Palace -all entrances guarded and blocked, tourists not allowed inside. When we reached the souks (Arab marketplace or bazaar) in the medina, we saw a lot of familiar marketplace sights like fresh produce and piles of fragrant spices. But at this one we also saw some unusual things, like a camel's neck and head on display in the butcher area. We had seen a head being offered as one of the meat options at one of the food stalls in Rabat, but this head was still attached to the neck and had fur and eyeballs intact. Virginia took a quick snapshot and started moving on, but the vendor insisted she come back and take another photo with him and Dennis flanking the head. We then did the number one thing that was recommended in the tour books -got ourselves lost in the medina. It's not hard to do as the medina is huge covering several city blocks, streets/alleys are all about the same size and not laid out in any sort of grid, the vendor stalls have very little to distinguish them apart from others, and on top of all that it was overcast, so you had no idea of north. We were enjoying wandering with our umbrellas keeping us dry from the occasionally light rain showers. But it started to rain heavier with no end in sight and so we tried to determine where we were so we could get ourselves back to the tram. At this point we were now wandering through a more upscale residential area where all the houses were surrounded by high walls and we saw no one on the street to ask for directions. We had our smartphone and Moroccan Telcom wifi modem with us and were able to get enough of a signal to get us back on track. Even though each sight-seeing place had been close to the next, they pulled us further and further from the hotel. So by the time we reached the hotel we were drenched. We put on dry clothes and got very comfortable watching the YouTube recordings of the Democratic and Republican Debates over the hotel wifi.
We planned to walk down to Rick's Café on the waterfront for dinner ("Everyone goes to Rick's"). It was just about a 20 min. walk from our hotel. We know that the Rick's Café Americain in the movie, Casablanca, is sitting on the backlot in Hollywood, but this one actually in Casablanca (opened March 1, 2004) was designed to recreate the bar made famous by the classic movie. The restaurant is filled with architectural and decorative details reminiscent of the film: curved arches, a sculpted bar, balconies, balustrades as well as beaded and stenciled brass lighting. The guides didn't recommend reservations so we were disappointed to see a tour bus stop at the doors of the restaurant and disgorge its contents just as we approached. The staff asked us to wait off to the side until they got the tour group accommodated. Then they told us that in fact they had two large groups that night and had no table available in the restaurant but we were welcome to go upstairs to the bar and have a drink. We were disappointed until we got upstairs and discovered that the waiter was in fact willing to serve us dinner there. We sat at a low, typical Moroccan, table and were served a sumptuous Moroccan dinner (lemon roasted chicken with lots of small side dishes and beer with a brand name Casablanca). On an LCD panel in the wall right in front of our table, the movie, Casablanca, played all night long -no sound, but with English subtitles. It could not have been more perfect or romantic -even better than a seat in the restaurant.
Mon Oct 19 We checked out of our hotel, but left our luggage with the desk there. We walked along the waterfront to the Hassan II Mosque. It is the largest mosque in Africa and the 7th largest in the world. Its minaret is the world's tallest. It is a modern building completed in 1993, after only 6 years of construction. The minaret is 60 stories high topped by a laser, the light from which is directed towards Mecca. We took a tour of the mosque and were told that all the materials except two are from Morocco. The 'other' two, come from Italy - Carrera marble pillars and Venetian Murano glass chandeliers. The walls are of hand-crafted marble and the roof is retractable. A maximum of 105,000 worshippers can gather together for prayer: 25,000 inside the mosque hall and another 80,000 on the mosque's outside grounds. It is huge and very beautiful -especially impressive as it is a recent building. The men and women's prayer area are still separate (upstairs vs downstairs) but since it is a recent building, our guide assured us that all other facilities were equal. We met an interesting couple from Canada on this tour. They were doing a 10-day bike tour of Morocco which sounded fun.
We walked back to the hotel, walking through the Old Medina and avoided getting lost. We retrieved our luggage, and took the tram to the Casa Voyageurs train station where we caught the Marrakech Express.
We bought our Amel in 2000 and spent the next 11 years preparing for our retirement cruise - a westward circumnavigation. We are members of the Santa Barbara Sail and Power Squadron and have taken many of the USPS courses. [...] We got in some overnight practice by participating in three Baha Haha Rallies (2004, 2006, 2008) and inbetween made many trips to the Channel Islands near our home in Santa Barbara California. We started our voyage in January 2011.
The first year we sailed from Santa Barbara, California down the westcoast of California, Baja, Mexico, and Central America to Golfito, Costa Rica.
The second year we sailed south from Costa Rica to Panama and Ecuador and then across the Pacific to the Galapagos, many island groups of French Polynesia, ending in Bundaberg, Australia.
The third year we sailed Indonesia (Sail Indonesia Rally), Malaysia (Sail Malaysia Rally), and Thailand. At the end of that season we transported Libertad from Phuket, Thailand to Turkey via Sevenstar Transport freighter.
Our fourth season started in Turkey where Libertad was offloaded and cruised Turkey, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, east coast of mainland Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, one stop on the French coast, and ended in Barcelona, Spain. At this point our plans changed as we went home to California for family needs and had a seven month hiatus, delaying our crossing of the Atlantic. This, our fifth season started off with a whirlwind land travel trip to some of the major European cities. Back on the boat in Barcelona, we headed for Gibraltar, then onto the Canaries where we crossed the Atlantic January 2016 with Jimmy Cornell's Atlantic Odyssey II.
We took the boat south to Grenada for the hurricane season. We return to Libertad late Dec 2016 to cruise the Caribbean northwest towards the Panama Canal. Getting close to home.
sorry...these pictures are showing in reverse order. I had to do this on an album that has the maximum number of pictures of course! Please start at last pic and back-up through them. again, sorry!
sorry that these are out of order, we crossed in February on our way from Panama to Ecuador - thought these were posted but guess not, so here they are
2008 we did our third Baja Haha rally. This time our crew were all Santa Barbara Sail and Power Squadron members. There were 5 of us aboard for the trip down; 3 brought the boat home.