The train ride from Marrakech to Casablanca was pretty straightforward, and interesting. First class tickets were only a couple of dollars more than regular tickets, so we sprung for them, and it turned out that first class was organized into little six-seat cabins. It never would have occurred to me to lay out a train car that way, which just served as a reminder that I haven’t been on that many trains in different countries that approach things differently.
We got into Casablanca and internet maps directed us to hop on a bus to get to our hotel. We got to the spot where the map told us the bus stop was, but there was absolutely no signage. We looked around, confused, wondering if we were in the right place. Fortunately, my traveling companion walked over to a nearby restaurant, where someone was standing outside, and asked. We were told that we were in the right place, and a few minutes later the bus really did pull over right where we were standing.
One odd thing was that every other time we caught the bus in the city, there were clear signs. So as far as I know it was just this first stop that we tried to get on the bus at that was so confusing.
Anyway, we spent the rest of that first day chilling at the hotel, and first thing the next morning, we went to check out the Hassan II Mosque. It’s one of the largest mosques in the world, and one of the few that schedules tours for non-believers in between prayer times. It’s built right on the coast, and designed to allow 25,000 people inside to worship, and it’s built in a massive courtyard that can hold another 80,000.
Tours are strictly timed so that they fall between prayer time so that tourists aren’t interrupting worshipers. If you ever get a chance to visit, I recommend it, and I also recommend arriving at least half an hour before the tour time you want to go through so that you can walk through the attached museum first.
Which is what we did, even though I wasn’t sure what to expect in said museum. It turns out that they did something really smart: the museum is made up almost entirely of examples of the craftsmanship used to build the mosque itself. Except in the museum you can get close-up looks at the carving and tile work and everything else, along with some very good descriptions of techniques used to produce them. This was a great primer, and helped me appreciate the mosque itself even more as I could recognize things I’d had a good look at even at a very far distance within the building.
While Marrakech is not particularly well-located for convenient day-tripping to many other places, Casablanca is different. We took the bus to the train and in less than two and a half hours, we were in Tangier. Like Lisbon, I was unprepared for how hilly Tangier was. Coming out of the train station and taking in the houses flowing up the hills made for a beautiful first impression of the city.
It was a short walk from the train station to the beach. We took a little bit to appreciate the view across the straight. I wasn’t really prepared for just how easy it was to see Europe. Like, I wouldn’t want to swim that distance, but I thought it’d be a lot harder to pick out.
The beach seemed to be mostly populated by locals out having fun, and we decided to join them. Shoes came off and we walked the length of the beach at the edge of the gentle surf. An incredibly relaxing experience, and I’m not sure I remember being on a beach with quite the same character.
After our beach walk we stopped by a little cafe to get a snack on the way back to the train station. This was the first place that I encountered what was called a “Snickers Cake”. After having this in Tangier, I found them in a number of bakeries around Casablanca, so I think this is a pretty common dessert in Morocco. Anyway, it’s a chocolate ganache cake coated with nuts and chocolate. It didn’t really make me think that much of a Snickers candy bar, but I like it a lot.
Later on in the week we took another day trip, this one to Rabat, the national capital. A notably smaller city than Casablanca, but still great. My favorite thing from the city was the Rabat Botanical Garden. It was far more arid than similar spaces I’d been in the US, which makes sense given the climate of northern Morocco. It was also still striking and beautiful. I think I appreciated it even more than I would have otherwise due to the novelty of the experience.
The garden itself was divided into sectors, each focused on a different type of plant, connected by a central promenade. I loved the layout, and each section was just big enough to enjoy without getting bored. Wandering around from section to section was a great way to spend an afternoon.
Before getting on the train back to Casablanca, we decided to grab food at a cafe that was pretty close to the garden. This was where I came to appreciate just how broad a category of food “tajine” is. I’d been under the impression that a tajine was mostly vegetables and spices cooked in a tajine since that’s what I had had before in the US, and was also what I had a couple of times in Marrakech. However, the tajine I got at this cafe was nothing like that. Well, except that it was cooked in a tajine. It was composed of sausage, french fries, and shredded cheese in a very nice tomato-based sauce. Very different from what I’d had before, but still delicious.
While we weren’t day tripping, we spent our time wandering around Casablanca visiting parks and finding great places to eat. We went to a traditional restaurant for a Friday kouskous meal. I’ve had kouskous before, but I don’t believe I’d ever fully appreciated just how insanely filling it is when prepared traditionally. I’m pretty sure that it literally expanded in my stomach, and we made it through maybe half of our dish before we tapped out. I wish I’d had time to learn more about the food culture. That’s something I should make a note of for my next international trip: find a cooking class or something.
Then it was time to fly back home.
But before that: a quick aside. One of the things that really struck me about our time in Marrakech and Casablanca was just how different the two cities felt. In the old city of Marrakech, it was like I could feel the weight of history. The city had managed to thrive without making that many compromises to modernity, especially to cars. There were a couple of roads that fed traffic through the outer edges of the medina, but there just wasn’t space for cars most places we went. Motorcycles were abundant, and they were the primary method for moving things around.
Casablanca, on the other hand, felt very much like a modern city. Not that it felt exactly like any other place I’ve been, but so much more was recognizable: streets laid out in a grid, cars and traffic lights, and very recognizable bus-based public transit. A city full of new food and places and people, but still recognizable in its broad strokes.
I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced two major cities in the same country with so much contrast. I mean, last year when I was in Japan, I found Kyoto and Tokyo to be very different from each other, but they were still structured like the cities I was familiar with. While Casablanca had that same familiarity, Marrakech felt very different.
You might remember that I mentioned an issue with our flight from Lisbon to Marrakech that we decided we’d deal with later. Well, we did so a couple of days after we arrived in Marrakech, booking tickets with a different airline for our trip back to the States. It was a bummer that we had to do this, but the customer service folks in Lisbon had been clear that there was no alternative, so we just bit the bullet.
Then, a couple of days before our flight back, our original airline sent us an email to remind us about our upcoming flights. Now, my initial thought was that they just had some bad IT, and that whatever automated reminder service they had didn’t check to see if the airline had canceled your ticket before contacting you. An annoying reminder that they’d kind of screwed us over, but we didn’t let it stress us out.
However, over those last couple of days, they sent us more reminders, and on the day of our flights, they sent us a “check into your flight online” email. At this point, we had already booked new flights with an airline that we trusted more, and we weren’t at all sure whether checking in would even work for our old flights, so we just moved on with our lives.
I suspect that it’s probably a good thing that I’ll never know for sure if we could have boarded that flight back or not. I don’t really want to have confirmation that we didn’t have to book entirely new international flights, but that we were told by the original airline that we would have to. I think that would make me even more displeased with them than I already am, and I don’t need that kind of energy in my life.
Anyway, other than the airline snafus, the entire trip was great. I loved Lisbon, Marrakech was beautiful, and Casablanca and the nearby cities were great. Well worth the trip. And while I’m loathe to claim any of the cities were “better” experiences than the others, the unique tenor of Marrakech means that if I had to recommend only one of them, that’s the one I’d suggest.
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