Casablanca! Day 2: At the Level of Gargoyles

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.