Location: Casablanca, Morocco

Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of Arabic tile work and architecture.

We docked in Casablanca, Morocco, and the weather is amazing. Easily the best of the whole world cruise. Clear skies, just a touch too warm but with a cool breeze. A good sign for the day.

I signed up for a “Flavors of Casablanca” tour, so we started with a walk thru a local market. There is a heavy French influence here and this market was in the middle of “Little Paris”. Adding to the illusion is the large number of Renault and Peugeot cars.

The shops were surprisingly similar to the ones I toured in Shanghai. What stood out for me was the small squadron of guardian cats near the sea food section, working for handouts.

The other thing was a local fountain. You have to understand, we are strolling down a back alley as shop owners are setting up and this fountain is tucked away between boxes. I was mesmerized, and it was a foreshadow of sights to come.

After looking at the shops we took a detour from our food-oriented tour to visit the Hassan II Mosque, which is a must-see in Casablanca. It is one of the largest mosques in the world. And is amazing.

It holds 25,000 inside and the roof opens and closes like a stadium. The surrounding plaza holds 80,000. But I fell in love with the tile work. We did not have time to go inside (this is one of the few mosques where non-Muslim can enter), but there is a nearby museum with tile pattern samples.

Here are one of the titanium (!!!) doors.

The mosque has the tallest minaret in the world. I took several detailed pictures and tried to make a panorama merger (thank you Lightroom), but the small size I must edit it to for posting in the blog does not do it justice.

We then moved across the bay. The mosque is built mostly on reclaimed land, and you can see the pillars under the building.

After visited the mosque we returned to our flavor tour, but with an unexpected curve ball. The ship arrived during the first week of Ramadan, which is a month of Muslims fasting during sunlight hours. Our guide said everyone is in a bad mood because they also have to give up coffee and smoking. Because of this the Moroccan restaurant we were originally going to visit was closed for lunch.

So, we moved to Lily’s, which is a beautiful Asian restaurant on the sea – but our teacher was the same chef we were to have originally. We watched him prepare Moroccan salad, a sweetened carrot side dish and chicken cooked within a tajine earthenware pot. They then proceeded to stuff us to the gills with food – for over two hours. We were literally waving our napkins in surrender at the end of it. I have videos of some of the demonstration that I will post once I get in a port with faster internet.

I was enthralled by Lily’s decor. Here are their walls, which are carved wood projected several inches from the structural walls with light effects within. They had wood accents like this thruout the rooms.

We then had some time for shopping before returning to the ship. I remember when my parents visited Morocco over 40 years ago and the things they brought back, so the store was full of memories for me. And some giant pots.

Casablanca is great – I’d love to visit again. And it is a bit of a milestone. Earlier in our cruise we visited Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. But then excepting Cape Town there was over six weeks of more… uh… rustic locations. Every port was a bit… um… chaotic. Casablanca is a return to a more organized world, including my “KFC” metric. I don’t remember a single KFC in Africa.

Next: Seville, Spain. One pain – we are sailing less than 300 miles almost straight North but must move our clocks forward two hours for the Central European Time zone. Two hours less sleep? Brutal…