We woke up slowly the next day and got some breakfast at the hotel, all very Moroccan-style: coffee with tons of milk and sugar, 2 different types of bread (1 fluffy and 1 flat), apricot spread, and painfully slow service. By noon, we were ready to head out and face the day.
The first stop was Hassan II Mosque, which is not only one of the only mosques in Morocco which non-Muslims can enter (as part of an old French law left over from the colonization period), but it is also the third largest mosque in the world (after Mecca and Medina) and has the largest minaret in the world. In The World!!! St. Peter’s Basilica could fit INSIDE this mosque! Believe me when I say that this place was massive. And gorgeous!
Finding the mosque was not at all difficult – it pretty much dominates the entire skyline. For about an hour we walked around the outside and took a bunch of photos while we waited for the next tour to start. Inside, it was kind of dark, but incredibly beautiful. The mosque had been completed fairly recently – commissioned in 1998, the building was finished in 1993, which is honestly unbelievable considering the amount of craftsmanship that went into it. It was so amazing to look at the small details all over the place – from woodwork to tiling to painting – and to hear that everything was hand-crafted blew me away. The main part of the mosque is reserved for men, while women have separate elevated sections gated off on either side of the main nave (or whatever the main aisle would be called outside the Christian world), to reduce distraction. The mosque can fit 20,000 worshippers at once, and if they reach capacity – which apparently does happen during Ramadan and other major prayers or holidays – then they can open all of the side doors and allow thousands more to worship outside. We had to remove our shoes to enter the mosque, and almost the entire place was carpeted, except for a small tiled channel down the center where they allow water to flow through the mosque during some services, before cascading down into the ablution room below. Did I mention that the mosque is built right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean? Yup, some allusion to the Quranic verse about God’s throne being located on the sea. And the coolest part of the construction: the roof opens! That’s right, the roof slides open stadium-style to reveal the sky above, though most of the time they keep it closed to minimize tarnishing and water damage from the humid sea air.
Our tour guide took us around the mosque itself, the ablution rooms, and the built-in hammam (which doesn’t seem to ever actually get used…). He was incredibly friendly and spoke very good English, and when we asked for pictures with him at the very end, he joked that we only wanted them so we could say we met Barack Obama – to which he bore a striking resemblance.
Our tour left us quite hungry, so we wandered the city discouraged that all of the cafes and restaurants seem to go into sleep mode between the hours of 2 and 6 PM. Eventually, we found one place, and boy was it worth the wait! Bruschetta, vegetables, bread and oil, and the second pizza that I’ve had on the whole trip! This one was had tomato sauce, mozzarella, chicken, and potato, which sounds kind of random, but turned out pretty delicious. I ate the whole thing. By myself.
Feeling an intense need to walk off all of those calories, and get a balanced diet of daily religion, Laura, Maura, Katherine, Juliana, Luzki, and I went to check out the Sacre-Coeur Cathedral. From any angle, it was like no other cathedral I had ever seen. Outside, it was fairly plain and seemed very influenced by the city’s surrounding Art Deco architecture. On top rested not gargoyles, but in their place, solid rectangular blocks. The inside was concrete painted completely white, except for the colorful, shining stained glass windows lining the walls and behind the altar. There were no pews or decorations, just awkward barriers set up that made me wonder if they were in the midst of remodeling or if the cathedral just never saw any use in this Muslim country. Either way, we were there to ascend the twin bell towers, which we did after handing over 15 dirhams a piece (definitely a Catholic church…).
I’d be lying if I told you that the climb up wasn’t sketchy – the tower wasn’t very well lit and we found random doors along the way, propped wide open and leading straight to the roof outside. But the view from the top was spectacular! We were up there for about 20 minutes as sunset approached, watching the life of the city down below and admiring the sheer massiveness (real word) of the city – buildings out as far as the eye could see! Giving into temptation, restlessness, and adolescent stupidity, we also took advantage of the chance to leave the safety of the tower and climb across the roof of the building, built like a huge backbone with flat and fairly wide ribs sticking off every 15 feet or so and those huge rectangular blocks at the ends. The roof itself was maybe 2 feet lower than these ribs and their closest point and sloped down independently. I walked out balance-beam style, toward the setting sun and right to the edge, hugging one of the big blockish monuments. In the midst of our fun, we were slightly scared to suddenly see the caretaker of the cathedral shouting and waving from where we’d climbed out onto the roof. But after a few seconds, he too just hopped up and started climbing with us, even pushing a few of the more timid girls out farther. The guy was hilarious and kind of a flirt with some of the girls, and we made sure to take pictures with him, too, after it had become too dark to stay up there much longer. I have to wonder whether the Moroccans on the ground below had seen our silhouettes up on the cathedral roof and wondered what in the world we were doing up there….
Back at the hotel, we reclaimed Anthony and Sarah, who had been napping, and took a taxi out to Ain Daib – Casa’s club district by the beach. First, we grabbed a round of drinks at a hotel bar overlooking the ocean, where a small jazz ensemble was singing odd versions of American songs. After this, we split up into a couple of groups to dance the night away at some of Casa’s discotheques – great fun, lots of techno, and some sketchy characters. At the end of the night, Anthony and I helped the girls throw off a couple of very insistent men who could not take a hint, and then regrouped at McDonald’s for a midnight snack. By the time we got back to our hotel, it was 3 AM and we were exhausted.
The following morning we ate breakfast at the hotel once again and shortly after half of us boarded the train back to Rabat to get some homework and family time in before the weekend drew to a close. All in all, an incredibly successful trip… if a little pricey. Here’s looking at you, Casa.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
State of Sean
So, my apologies to everyone for disappearing from the blog for a few weeks - first I suffered some collateral damage from a raging battle between my stomach and something I ate. After that, I suffered a severe case of classwork. I'm not yet sure which was more painful...
However, I have returned temporarily before I set off on a new adventure through Morocco! That's right - it's excursion time! The CCCL is taking us on an 8-day trek through Morocco from the desert to the mountains, from Marrakesh to Fez, and to a bunch of places in between! So I'll once again be out of contact for a little bit, but I should have plenty of stories to tell upon my return!
Also, in case you need to fill the disparaging lack of Moroccan stories caused by my temporary absence, I have added a list of links to 3 other blogs which some of the other BU students here are creating. Enjoy!
However, I have returned temporarily before I set off on a new adventure through Morocco! That's right - it's excursion time! The CCCL is taking us on an 8-day trek through Morocco from the desert to the mountains, from Marrakesh to Fez, and to a bunch of places in between! So I'll once again be out of contact for a little bit, but I should have plenty of stories to tell upon my return!
Also, in case you need to fill the disparaging lack of Moroccan stories caused by my temporary absence, I have added a list of links to 3 other blogs which some of the other BU students here are creating. Enjoy!
Casablanca! Day 1: As Time Goes By
Casablanca – probably the one town in Morocco that you can name off the top of your head… if you knew that it was in Morocco at all.
At any rate, it was the site of our latest adventure! Last Friday after our morning of classes finished up, the 7-strong contingent of BU kids (and Juliana’s visiting friend Luzki) packed up our bags with clothes and packed up our stomachs with our families’ cous cous (I LOVE the idea of cous cous Fridays!) and we were off! We boarded the train for a brief one-hour ride through the Moroccan countryside, looking out the windows as Africa (Africa!) passed us by. We saw grasslands, we saw cows, we saw the shore, and – mostly – we saw the slums on the outskirts of both Rabat and Casa (as Moroccans like to affectionately refer to the city… although really Moroccans don’t seem to have too much affection for it – when I excitedly told my host brother where I was going for the weekend he just blankly looked at me and asked, “Why?”).
Pulling into Casa, it was apparent that this city was much more Western than the rest of Morocco. The fact that it is known by its Spanish rather than Arabic name (Dar al-Baida – both literally translate to “White House” in English) should be telling enough…. Sections of the city were dominated by high-rise buildings, more signs were in Roman script than in Rabat, and even the old medina section was more open and navigable than the narrow, maze-like streets to which we have become accustomed. And, of course, this also means that there’s a whole lot more traffic, pollution, and general dirtiness to be found in Casablanca.
Our first task was finding Hotel Central, which we had booked earlier that week for $20 per night for a couple of triples with private bathrooms, breakfast included! The directions we got from Google maps led us completely astray, but a few locals pointed us in the right direction. Expecting to find a sketchy, grungy hostel, imagine our surprise when we stumbled upon a quaint little place at the back of a beautiful little square with a few cafes and a small park (and, of course, the standard hordes of Moroccan street cats which only I among the group seem to appreciate). Inside the hotel, we were greeted by the owner, who proclaims to be insane and follows through on the promise. Loud, boisterous, and hilarious, he treats us all to a round of high-fives before giving us a few forms to fill out and giving us the keys to our rooms. The rooms themselves were awesome: painted bright orange with white sheets on the beds and blue and tan highlights from the decorations, the room was alive with color. My room had a set of doors with glass panes which opened out onto a small balcony overlooking the square in front of the building. Later that night, we would meet a nice middle-aged, blonde woman from Orange County who was relaxing on the balcony next door and was still a little perplexed by the culture here. But then, aren’t we all?
For dinner, we got dressed up and headed out to the legendary Rick’s Café of Casablanca fame. Well, ok, technically the entire movie was filmed in a Hollywood studio and in no way reflects the actual local culture of the time, but about a decade ago a nice American woman named Kathy Kriger moved to Casablanca and decided that it needed a real Rick’s. So, she bought up a building on the edge of the old medina and created it as best she could in form and atmosphere. They have a live piano player (named not Sam, but – get excited – Issam!), who played an assortment of jazz tunes, including at least 4 separate renditions of “As Time Goes By.” And if that wasn’t enough, they show the movie on a continual loop in one room upstairs. The place is actually quite swanky, and was the site of my classiest, most expensive, and potentially most delicious meal yet in Morocco. Of course, the food was pretty Western: I had a chicken pot pie dish with wine (pretty much unheard of in this Muslim country…), a garden salad, far too many rolls of bread, communal sides of cauliflower, eggplant, and cooked apples, plus a dessert of pineapple slices with ice cream over coconut pastries. So good!
Since only 3 of us had actually seen the movie, all of my Casablanca-unaware traveling mates were scared away by the price tag (my meal came out to about 170 dirhams all told, which is really only $25ish dollars, but that’s fairly hefty around here…). Instead, they all went to a Spanish tapas restaurant that we had seen in some of our earlier wanderings. We went to join them after we finished, finding them in restaurant’s basement dance club in the midst of a number of Moroccan men downstairs. Apparently the men had been seated nearby during dinner and provided them with a number of drinks and a few side dishes. Did I mention that they were all women? We joined in the dancing for a bit and even got to do some flaming shots – B-52s, apparently. Mine was not on the Moroccan men’s tab, naturally.
As the club began to calm down a bit (around 1:00 or so) we decided to leave before things got too awkward. Walking out of the restaurant, I couldn’t help but notice some employees up on the first floor dressed up and playing instruments to the patrons mid-meal – it looks like the El Sombrero mariachis are harder to escape than I thought! We managed to wind our way back through the medina streets and to the hotel for some sleep, despite some rather loud meowing outside our window….
At any rate, it was the site of our latest adventure! Last Friday after our morning of classes finished up, the 7-strong contingent of BU kids (and Juliana’s visiting friend Luzki) packed up our bags with clothes and packed up our stomachs with our families’ cous cous (I LOVE the idea of cous cous Fridays!) and we were off! We boarded the train for a brief one-hour ride through the Moroccan countryside, looking out the windows as Africa (Africa!) passed us by. We saw grasslands, we saw cows, we saw the shore, and – mostly – we saw the slums on the outskirts of both Rabat and Casa (as Moroccans like to affectionately refer to the city… although really Moroccans don’t seem to have too much affection for it – when I excitedly told my host brother where I was going for the weekend he just blankly looked at me and asked, “Why?”).
Pulling into Casa, it was apparent that this city was much more Western than the rest of Morocco. The fact that it is known by its Spanish rather than Arabic name (Dar al-Baida – both literally translate to “White House” in English) should be telling enough…. Sections of the city were dominated by high-rise buildings, more signs were in Roman script than in Rabat, and even the old medina section was more open and navigable than the narrow, maze-like streets to which we have become accustomed. And, of course, this also means that there’s a whole lot more traffic, pollution, and general dirtiness to be found in Casablanca.
Our first task was finding Hotel Central, which we had booked earlier that week for $20 per night for a couple of triples with private bathrooms, breakfast included! The directions we got from Google maps led us completely astray, but a few locals pointed us in the right direction. Expecting to find a sketchy, grungy hostel, imagine our surprise when we stumbled upon a quaint little place at the back of a beautiful little square with a few cafes and a small park (and, of course, the standard hordes of Moroccan street cats which only I among the group seem to appreciate). Inside the hotel, we were greeted by the owner, who proclaims to be insane and follows through on the promise. Loud, boisterous, and hilarious, he treats us all to a round of high-fives before giving us a few forms to fill out and giving us the keys to our rooms. The rooms themselves were awesome: painted bright orange with white sheets on the beds and blue and tan highlights from the decorations, the room was alive with color. My room had a set of doors with glass panes which opened out onto a small balcony overlooking the square in front of the building. Later that night, we would meet a nice middle-aged, blonde woman from Orange County who was relaxing on the balcony next door and was still a little perplexed by the culture here. But then, aren’t we all?
For dinner, we got dressed up and headed out to the legendary Rick’s Café of Casablanca fame. Well, ok, technically the entire movie was filmed in a Hollywood studio and in no way reflects the actual local culture of the time, but about a decade ago a nice American woman named Kathy Kriger moved to Casablanca and decided that it needed a real Rick’s. So, she bought up a building on the edge of the old medina and created it as best she could in form and atmosphere. They have a live piano player (named not Sam, but – get excited – Issam!), who played an assortment of jazz tunes, including at least 4 separate renditions of “As Time Goes By.” And if that wasn’t enough, they show the movie on a continual loop in one room upstairs. The place is actually quite swanky, and was the site of my classiest, most expensive, and potentially most delicious meal yet in Morocco. Of course, the food was pretty Western: I had a chicken pot pie dish with wine (pretty much unheard of in this Muslim country…), a garden salad, far too many rolls of bread, communal sides of cauliflower, eggplant, and cooked apples, plus a dessert of pineapple slices with ice cream over coconut pastries. So good!
Since only 3 of us had actually seen the movie, all of my Casablanca-unaware traveling mates were scared away by the price tag (my meal came out to about 170 dirhams all told, which is really only $25ish dollars, but that’s fairly hefty around here…). Instead, they all went to a Spanish tapas restaurant that we had seen in some of our earlier wanderings. We went to join them after we finished, finding them in restaurant’s basement dance club in the midst of a number of Moroccan men downstairs. Apparently the men had been seated nearby during dinner and provided them with a number of drinks and a few side dishes. Did I mention that they were all women? We joined in the dancing for a bit and even got to do some flaming shots – B-52s, apparently. Mine was not on the Moroccan men’s tab, naturally.
As the club began to calm down a bit (around 1:00 or so) we decided to leave before things got too awkward. Walking out of the restaurant, I couldn’t help but notice some employees up on the first floor dressed up and playing instruments to the patrons mid-meal – it looks like the El Sombrero mariachis are harder to escape than I thought! We managed to wind our way back through the medina streets and to the hotel for some sleep, despite some rather loud meowing outside our window….
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