I’m in Casablanca to join a 14-day sightseeing tour of the “highlights” with GAdventures. My tour starts this evening at 6pm with a group meeting and dinner so I had the day free to explore town. I’d arranged to meet a fellow traveler after breakfast to sightsee together so at 9a we set off.

The main, and some say only, sight worth seeing here is the immense Hassan II mosque. I foolishly relied on my map app to direct us – it might have been the shortest route but it was not the most direct so we ended up rushing to buy tickets for the 10a tour.

The mosque is the world’s 3rd largest, with a capacity of 25,000 worshippers and was built in 1993. Just six year’s construction time but that involved 1000’s of artisans working 24/7. I found it rather elegant and subdued, whereas others mosques I’ve seen were almost gaudy in the richness of color and gold used.

After the tour Karen and I palled around with two lovely English gentlemen we met in the ticket line. Ed was here for 9 weeks on assignment as a visiting priest, and Richard a buddy visiting for a long weekend. We headed to Rick’s Cafe for lunch, because that’s what you do in Casablanca. Unfortunately it doesn’t share much with the movie but the name and fez-wearing waiters but it was elegant and the food delicious.

After lunch we wandered through the Medina but as it was afternoon on a Friday most stalls were closed (their “Sunday “), checked out some fading architecture, and toured the central market. Again closing but that’s a shame as Ed said he ate there last week – you choose your fish from a stall and they take it to whatever restaurant you’d like to have it freshly prepared for lunch. Would have been fun to watch.

At 6p we met with our guide for our pre-trip briefing. There’s 14 of us, almost all Americans and besides one younger couple all in the upper age ranges 🙂 10 continued on to have dinner together but as I was still full from lunch I stayed behind and enjoyed a beer and listened to the swinging hits from our hotel lounge singer. Tomorrow we hit the road!