A&E Abroad: Casablanca. May 28

So. After the eventful night before, today went surprisingly better. Well, we started the day walking to find the Medina (old town) and the Hassan II Mosque. The mosque is this crazy new, huge building along the beach, which is basically the only thing Casablanca is known for. Now, we think it's fair to get this over and done with straight away, Casablanca is most definitely the least great city in Morocco. We both were very confused by this starting point for our Moroccan adventure, because firstly, it didn't seem to fit our idea of what Morocco was. It was modern in a kind of gross, dirty way, and very very male dominated. So I mean, going into the medina and going to the mosque is really all you can do here. The medina we were initially confused about. Mainly because we didn't quite know what that meant. So we went through these big gates, we now realise are the medina walls, and then tried to navigate from there to the mosque. Which is IMPOSSIBLE because medina's are like these never ending mazes of streets that seem to never actually go anywhere. There were various market stalls and shops throughout which were pretty nice to see. Also we saw a donkey pulling a cart of onions through tiny streets, which was very cool. Also on this note of the medina, we were very overwhelmed at this point in time, we seemed to be getting a lot of attention from the locals and also were very very lost, so we got like no photos in here.

We finally got out of the medina and made it to the mosque, the huge minaret is a key feature, and the building was amazing from the outside. It was also very windy and we were dying in the wind, nearly being blown away (comparable to Brighton day). We weren't able to go in for a bit because for non Muslims you have to go in on a tour, and the tours run around the daily prayers. So we went in search of a lunch place. Now again, we have to reiterate, the men. They were everywhere, like we barely saw any women on the street. And this was the same in cafes, only men and rarely a foreigner. This would normally be fine, but we were sooooo overwhelmed as it was, that every cafe was scary to us haha. We FINALLY settled on one that was empty (probably not the best sign) and both got a chicken and lemon tagine, with French fries in it? Seems a little odd but it was actually very tasty and 10/10 would eat again.

Finally we got to the Mosque for our guided tour, which began in the main prayer hall. Our tour guide was a little crazy and she would give a two minute explanation then leave us to take photos for like ten minutes whilst she sat and chatted to the other guides, it was weird. The building was insane though. Like huge. And so intricately decorated. Basically all the materials, with only a very small exception, were sourced from Morocco and the plaster work was carved in the building, not at a separate site. It was pretty incredible and was built within 6 years finishing in 1993, which seemed crazy for it to be completed so quickly. It is beautiful though. It fits a huge amount of people in it for prayer and the men pray on the floor and women on an upper mezzanine, the reason for which is to prevent any distraction from prayer. The entire main roof can slide open so in times like Ramadan, when it's super hot and there are a lot of people going to the Mosque, people outside can hear and those inside can breath. We went down under this main hall to a room for ablution before prayer. It is filled with fountains, one room for the women and one for the men. Likewise there is a bathing room, one for women and one identical for men, but this has never actually been used. Our tour ended there and from the mosque we walked back to our hotel in the new town area via the medina again.
This time we got very lost, getting stuck in all the curving streets that go nowhere, having people tell us that we can't walk the way we were going, even though we definitely could. On our way to the main street we found a cake shop where we got some delicious cakes and also an ice cream stand, where for about a dollar we each got two scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone. Once we finally made it back to the hotel we kinda vegged and watched some movies on TV, and got some much needed sleep before beginning our tour tomorrow.