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Although You Die, La Resistance Lives On
Jan. 26th, 2015 12:26 amOn Sunday we opted to make the hour-long journey south to the magical city of Casablanca, the largest in Morocco with six million people. We had intended to get up reasonably early but a combination of a late night and Wolfie's incessant snoring meant that we didn't get as much sleep as we would have liked so we slept in somewhat. Still, we were out the door by 10:30am but frustratingly as I was buying the train tickets, our train arrived and then disappeared from view. This meant a 45 minute delay, which increased to nearly an hour as once again the train was delayed, so we sat in the station cafe and overlooked the square, sipping deliciously sweet mint tea and people watching, with an average dinde sandwich in hand. It passed the time anyway and soon we were on the station platform, then on the train, heading to Casablanca. The train journey was largely uneventful although 'tete a la train' means the opposite to what I think it means as we had to yomp down the station platform to get up first class. Still, we made it, although this first class wasn't split into compartments and someone was sat in Wolfie's seat. We just close two next to him and opted to say nothing.
We made into Casablanca in a pretty timely fashion considering the eight minute delay and with a tram stop conveniently placed outside (but no map routes displayed until inconveniently past the ticket barriers - the security guard checking tickets proved to be most helpful), we were soon on our way into the heart of the metropolis which was only five stops away. As with many cities, Casablanca is a higgeldy Piggeldy mix of sleek new buildings, crumbling colonial edifices and neat houses, with a definite city feel far beyond that of Rabat and Marrakech. Upon alighting at Place Nations Unies, this was very evident, with a huge urban square surrounded by Art Deco modern buildings, the medina to one side, an odd climbing frame structure in front of it and the Hyatt Regency Hotel to the left. With about an hour to kill before the tour of the Hassan II mosque, we headed over to the small medina and souk district, where we were accosted by a local who claimed to have had family north of London without being too specific as to where. He was a nice guy but as is so often the case here, kindness often comes at a financial price and so this proved to be, as he guided us into the medina before showing us into a shop selling carpets and drapes to meet his friend Ahmed. It was at this point that the first guy suspiciously left us before Ahmed started with mint tea and patter, taking us through nearly every damn carpet he had in his shop. Over mint tea, he must have laid out around fifty carpets on the floor, while his female assistant was busy scurrying around after him. He allowed us to feel the softness of the pile in the carpets, silks and other textiles he was selling and admittedly they were veto soft but I had no real intention of buying a carpet and he was difficult to put off. I claimed I had no money but he said there was an ATM nearby and he was very desperate to get a sale, highlighting that we could barter with him for a good price. Having laid out the forty or so pieces on the floor, he asked us to say "maybe" or "no" in Arabic to whether we would consider purchasing them. We whittled it down to four and he started the bartering process, insisting that we would get a cheap deal if we bought in bulk. It was a little intimidating and he started to get a little aggressive, offering us two carpets for 500 dirham when we said we would take one for 250 (this was knocked down from 600 as I claimed 250 was all I had). He requested twenty dirhams "for the lady" to which we relented and we left with a small red rug we didn't particularly want but at least it was a decent souvenir at a reasonable price.
With the mood somewhat soured, we walked around the souks in the blistering sunshine, enjoying the warmth on our backs and watching the locals barter for goods. There were a fair few beggars, particularly kids selling tissues, but we ignored them as best we could as we observed a range of products being sold, but mainly textiles and leather. Seeing the minarets and mosques snuggled close to the winding alleyways was still a unique slice of local life and it certainly lifted the mood as we headed out of the ornate main archway leading into the market area. The King Hassan II Mosque is built right on the seashore, echoing a verse from the Qu'ran which states that God's throne was built on the water. Legend has it that you can see the Atlantic Ocean underneath the mosque but we were to discover that this was a myth. Built on a promontory looking into the Ocean, the mosque is the third biggest in the world, after only those in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, while at 210m in height, it also contains the tallest minaret of any mosque in the world. Atop this there is a laser beam which shines in the direction of Mecca, which would have been good to see but we could not visit it in the dark. There is room for 25,000 worshippers inside - with men on the exquisite white, green and pink marble floor quarried from local stone and women on the ornate wooden balconies that flank either side of the vast main chamber. In the vast grounds, which simply add to the sense of awe inspiring perspective as you walk up to the mosque, 80,000 worshippers can be accommodated, as they often are during the holy month of Ramadan.
As the mosque is away from the centre of the city, we had to take a taxi, always a risk in a foreign city when you are a tourist. As we headed towards the Hyatt, where the taxi rank was, a driver who was talking to his friend noticed us and asked if we wanted to use his taxi. We explained what we wanted and he understood, even offering to wait for an hour outside the mosque while we looked around and to then take us back into the city centre. I got the impression that at the low point in the tourist season, and on a Sunday, he had little else to do and so was happy to sit in a coffee shop and wait for us as he got two guaranteed fares off the back of it (four actually as taxi prices here are done on a per person basis). Traffic was quite light as it was a Sunday so we got to the mosque with half an hour to spare ahead of the tour, which was due to commence at 2pm. Normally, non-Muslims are not usually allowed in mosques but King Hassan II decreed that this would be a place where people of all faiths could go when the mosque opened in 1993 to commemorate his 60th birthday. Built in the six years previously and funded by public subscription, this is probably the grandest building I have seen that was built in the twentieth century, with everything inside the mosque of local origin apart from the chandeliers, which are from Italy. Walking around the structure gave you a sense of its majesty but that still didn't prepare you for the splendor of the interior, done in marble, stucco and cedar wood in explicit and painstaking detail. Upon entering the mosque, our guide requested that we remove our shoes, while he gave us considerable insight into the workings of the mosque and of Islam itself. The mosque operates tours in a number of languages and we are segregated before the tour begins, with the tour itself taking in the main mosque, the hammam and the ablution area. This was particularly interesting, with marble fountains in the shape of flowers allowing water to flow upon their contours and down into a basin, allowing the faithful to perform the pre-prayer rituals which are so important to the Islamic faith. These are placed underneath the main floor of the mosque and are tiled with blue, green and yellow zellij, which form a similar pattern to the exterior of the mosque. The stunning sea views over the Atlantic only add to the majesty of the building and it was a fantastic honour to be able to see it.
There is a museum attached to the mosque which details how the zellij are made, along with various aspects of the Islamic faith but with our taxi driver waiting, we didn't think it would be fair to keep him waiting still. To be fair to him, he was still there, parked haphazardly in the car park where we had left him, and he greeted us with a very friendly manner. It turned out that he also does some tour guiding and he suggested that before we go back to the city centre that we should head along the coast a little bit to see the mosque from a different angle. We agreed and we are glad he did, as the view over the bay towards the mosque, with the sound of the Atlantic Ocean lapping at the shore was tremendously evocative, moving even, as the sunshine beat down on a true picture postcard scene. I could have stood there for ages but Wolfie was being a little impatient due to his foot so we had to leave prematurely, which was unfortunate. On the way back to the city, we noted the new tourist developments that were being thrown up, along with the mismatch of buildings that demonstrated the chaos of the place. Expensive offices sat next to slum dwellings and it was this disparity that was the catalyst to a major terrorist incident in the city on 16 May 2003 when 13 suicide bombers from the shanty towns of Casablanca - many of which we could see from the train - killed themselves and 32 others in public places across the city. There is a memorial to the victims in Place Mohammed V in the heart of downtown. As we were driving through the city, our driver asked us whether we wanted to go to the tourist beach strip, which we declined, before suggesting we could go to a spice and carpet market in one of the backstreets, with the two establishments being opposite each other. Whether these places are favoured by locals or not I'm unsure, but we went anyway but the hard sell started to happen again so we said we had no money and jumped back in the cab. Oddly, the carpet shop salesman, like Ahmed earlier in the day, kept saying "Luvvly Jubbily" as if acting like Del Boy would make it more likely we would buy yet more goods we didn't actually want or need from them. We could also have gone to Rick's Cafe Americain but the film Casablanca was not actually shot here and this cafe has been set up afterwards by an entrepreneurial American diplomat. I think one American tourist on our mosque tour was fooled into believing it's authentic though.
With directive in hand, the taxi driver drove us to our next destination, the shining white Cathedrale de Sacre Couer on one corner of the tranquil Parc de la Ligue Arabe. While we drove, we saw a guy selling two puppies at the side of the road - poor puppies! We gave the driver a handsome tip to which he said he would drive us back to Casa Voyageurs railway station, some 2km away and where we had to catch our train back to Rabat, for free. Feeling we would have to tip him further and with the tram a mere six dirhams each, we ended up declining his generous offer. There was some kids party thing going on in the church, which had a large bounty castle and trampoline in it. The lustre of the stained glass windows in a myriad of colours was intense in the African sun yet oddly we were not allowed beyond the front door as apparently it was a private event, even though it was clearly being advertised and was fifty dirham to get in. Consequently, we had a strange day in which we were permitted access to a mosque yet barred from entering a church, which was most strange. We were at the church as it marked the start of a walking tour guide of the city highlighted by the Lonely Planet guidebook which took in a range of architectural sights of the downtown area, most of them built in the French colonial era between 1910 and 1939, when the city exponentially grew in size. The church was one such example of this, having been built in 1930 in typical Mauresque style, which incorporated Islamic architecture with Parisian Art Deco and added carved facades to the mix. Many of the old civic buildings adopted these motifs, including the old wilaya (the old police headquarters) which has a modernist clock tower atop of it. This lights up in the darkness and can be seen down Avenue Hassan II from Place Nations Unies/Place du 16 Novembre. The palais de justice, old post office building and Bank al-Maghreb are all heavily influenced by the Moroccan style with the large door and entrance of the former based on the Persian iwan or entry into a courtyard of a Medersa. Outside the post office there is a little square where there was quite a bit of life going on, I think around feeding the birds, which had all congregated around the central fountain. There were people dressed in traditional dress dolled up with gold bells which they were clanging - very much like Moroccan Morris dancers I assume - while there were sellers selling bird seed and nuts with which to feed the birds. It was all very interesting but Wolfie needed another sit down so we continued to the next stop on the tour, La Princiere, Salon de The.
In a predominantly dry country, tea houses are a big thing and the drinking of mint tea is a significant part of the culture. I've started to get into it, having been put off peppermint tea at home due to its intense and largely synthetic flavour. It's fair to say that La Princiere has seen better days, attested by the white crown that sits on the roofline. The facade is impressive but the interior looks quite worn, a grey coating perhaps covering the original features. The tea and biscuits were delicious and we sat outside, sadly out of the sun and opposite a concrete monstrosity of a building, to people watch. This was very interesting, doing as the locals do, but we were pestered by shoeshine boys and a bloke with his guitar who insisted on singing to us for thirty seconds despite us telling him we weren't interested. He eventually buggered off to pester another table while I had to endure a particularly bad squat toilet which was far from the highlight of the trip. The rest of the walking tour largely involved looking at hotels from the colonial era, some of which having been restored to former glory and one just a shell of what it once was as the owner does not have enough money to restore it but the authorities refuse to tear it down (the Hotel Lincoln). We were expecting at least a full exterior but no, half of the building, including the roof is missing and it's being held up by scaffolding. You could still see the black tiling where the bathrooms once were. I do hope this can be resorted like some of the other hotels, which are splendidly done and make nice additions to the colonial streets which largely just hold offices these days. The tour ended with a few beautiful golden facades, namely on the post office building and the Le Matin/Maroc Soir building which was in a nice state of dilapidation. We also saw a favourite haunt of Albert Camus, Petit Pouchet with its original bar counter, before seeing a very old cinema which looks like a 1950s example straight out of Britain (Cinema Rialto). All of this demonstrated the wealth of architectural beauty in the city and it was great seeing it first hand, along with exploring the range of shops, restaurants and bars in the heart of the city.
I say bars as finding places to drink was surprisingly easy in Casablanca, far more so than in Rabat and Marrakech, which made me question why we didn't stay over in Casablanca (to be fair there are far fewer things to do for tourists in Casablanca even though it's the largest city in Morocco). With around two and a half hours left in Casablanca, we went to the Hyatt to discuss our plans, where we discovered that a beer was an eye watering 85 dirhams. I'm not paying £6 for Becks so we opted for another mint tea as we contemplated our next mood in a bar which went a little over the top with the dark wood. Interestingly, we had to pass through a metal detector to get into the hotel, which is something I haven't experienced outside of Russia. Anyway, for 100 dirhams we got a pot of mint tea between us and some tasty macaroons - I managed to spill icing sugar all down my trousers - which wasn't that bad value considering we got four glasses each out of the pot. It wasn't as nice as the mint tea from the little tatty cafés though, and far less interesting from a people watching perspective as I imagine the average Moroccan couldn't afford these prices. We had hoped to take in a French restaurant in Casablanca but sensing time was against us and needing to catch the 7:35pm train back (there's no such thing as an open return here), we opted instead to go to the bar made famous by Camus (in the end we went to a French restaurant in Rabat Agdal called La Entrecôte, where I had an entrecôte in Roquefort sauce with a glass of Moroccan white wine called Terre Blanche, which is remarkably crisp (yes I know steak should be served with red wine and the waiter clearly knew that too but Morocco is more famed for whites than reds, with whites more consistent for quality here)). We walked around the main square of Casablanca a little longer before heading towards Camus's way, reasoning that by doing this, we could walk one stop closer to the main railway station. However, we became distracted by another bar called Source Atlas so popped in there for a drink instead. It was a sports bar showing top flight Moroccan football and serving Stork, a beer we had not yet tried. There was a little betting booth in one corner and a range of locals all fully engaged with the game, which I think involved a local side. The quality was very good and it was fun watching the match, while the staff spoke to us briefly about Moroccan football as a whole. Occasionally, itinerant sellers offering nuts tried to sell their wares, moving from bar to bar and table to table trying to tempt people to buy their snacks. We weren't hungry but many people did. The smoke in the bar was quite thick and intense, playing havoc with my blocked nose and sore throat, but despite its rough and ready guise, we enjoyed being here, with one of the punters even telling us the story behind the name of the pub as we left. Sadly we did have to leave to catch our train and after missing a tram due to the fact we had to use different pre-paid cards to get on the platform, we couldn't use the same one twice, much to Wolfie's annoyance, we got to the train station in time and caught our train back to Rabat after a wonderful afternoon in a beguiling, schizophrenic and yet enchanting city.
We made into Casablanca in a pretty timely fashion considering the eight minute delay and with a tram stop conveniently placed outside (but no map routes displayed until inconveniently past the ticket barriers - the security guard checking tickets proved to be most helpful), we were soon on our way into the heart of the metropolis which was only five stops away. As with many cities, Casablanca is a higgeldy Piggeldy mix of sleek new buildings, crumbling colonial edifices and neat houses, with a definite city feel far beyond that of Rabat and Marrakech. Upon alighting at Place Nations Unies, this was very evident, with a huge urban square surrounded by Art Deco modern buildings, the medina to one side, an odd climbing frame structure in front of it and the Hyatt Regency Hotel to the left. With about an hour to kill before the tour of the Hassan II mosque, we headed over to the small medina and souk district, where we were accosted by a local who claimed to have had family north of London without being too specific as to where. He was a nice guy but as is so often the case here, kindness often comes at a financial price and so this proved to be, as he guided us into the medina before showing us into a shop selling carpets and drapes to meet his friend Ahmed. It was at this point that the first guy suspiciously left us before Ahmed started with mint tea and patter, taking us through nearly every damn carpet he had in his shop. Over mint tea, he must have laid out around fifty carpets on the floor, while his female assistant was busy scurrying around after him. He allowed us to feel the softness of the pile in the carpets, silks and other textiles he was selling and admittedly they were veto soft but I had no real intention of buying a carpet and he was difficult to put off. I claimed I had no money but he said there was an ATM nearby and he was very desperate to get a sale, highlighting that we could barter with him for a good price. Having laid out the forty or so pieces on the floor, he asked us to say "maybe" or "no" in Arabic to whether we would consider purchasing them. We whittled it down to four and he started the bartering process, insisting that we would get a cheap deal if we bought in bulk. It was a little intimidating and he started to get a little aggressive, offering us two carpets for 500 dirham when we said we would take one for 250 (this was knocked down from 600 as I claimed 250 was all I had). He requested twenty dirhams "for the lady" to which we relented and we left with a small red rug we didn't particularly want but at least it was a decent souvenir at a reasonable price.
With the mood somewhat soured, we walked around the souks in the blistering sunshine, enjoying the warmth on our backs and watching the locals barter for goods. There were a fair few beggars, particularly kids selling tissues, but we ignored them as best we could as we observed a range of products being sold, but mainly textiles and leather. Seeing the minarets and mosques snuggled close to the winding alleyways was still a unique slice of local life and it certainly lifted the mood as we headed out of the ornate main archway leading into the market area. The King Hassan II Mosque is built right on the seashore, echoing a verse from the Qu'ran which states that God's throne was built on the water. Legend has it that you can see the Atlantic Ocean underneath the mosque but we were to discover that this was a myth. Built on a promontory looking into the Ocean, the mosque is the third biggest in the world, after only those in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, while at 210m in height, it also contains the tallest minaret of any mosque in the world. Atop this there is a laser beam which shines in the direction of Mecca, which would have been good to see but we could not visit it in the dark. There is room for 25,000 worshippers inside - with men on the exquisite white, green and pink marble floor quarried from local stone and women on the ornate wooden balconies that flank either side of the vast main chamber. In the vast grounds, which simply add to the sense of awe inspiring perspective as you walk up to the mosque, 80,000 worshippers can be accommodated, as they often are during the holy month of Ramadan.
As the mosque is away from the centre of the city, we had to take a taxi, always a risk in a foreign city when you are a tourist. As we headed towards the Hyatt, where the taxi rank was, a driver who was talking to his friend noticed us and asked if we wanted to use his taxi. We explained what we wanted and he understood, even offering to wait for an hour outside the mosque while we looked around and to then take us back into the city centre. I got the impression that at the low point in the tourist season, and on a Sunday, he had little else to do and so was happy to sit in a coffee shop and wait for us as he got two guaranteed fares off the back of it (four actually as taxi prices here are done on a per person basis). Traffic was quite light as it was a Sunday so we got to the mosque with half an hour to spare ahead of the tour, which was due to commence at 2pm. Normally, non-Muslims are not usually allowed in mosques but King Hassan II decreed that this would be a place where people of all faiths could go when the mosque opened in 1993 to commemorate his 60th birthday. Built in the six years previously and funded by public subscription, this is probably the grandest building I have seen that was built in the twentieth century, with everything inside the mosque of local origin apart from the chandeliers, which are from Italy. Walking around the structure gave you a sense of its majesty but that still didn't prepare you for the splendor of the interior, done in marble, stucco and cedar wood in explicit and painstaking detail. Upon entering the mosque, our guide requested that we remove our shoes, while he gave us considerable insight into the workings of the mosque and of Islam itself. The mosque operates tours in a number of languages and we are segregated before the tour begins, with the tour itself taking in the main mosque, the hammam and the ablution area. This was particularly interesting, with marble fountains in the shape of flowers allowing water to flow upon their contours and down into a basin, allowing the faithful to perform the pre-prayer rituals which are so important to the Islamic faith. These are placed underneath the main floor of the mosque and are tiled with blue, green and yellow zellij, which form a similar pattern to the exterior of the mosque. The stunning sea views over the Atlantic only add to the majesty of the building and it was a fantastic honour to be able to see it.
There is a museum attached to the mosque which details how the zellij are made, along with various aspects of the Islamic faith but with our taxi driver waiting, we didn't think it would be fair to keep him waiting still. To be fair to him, he was still there, parked haphazardly in the car park where we had left him, and he greeted us with a very friendly manner. It turned out that he also does some tour guiding and he suggested that before we go back to the city centre that we should head along the coast a little bit to see the mosque from a different angle. We agreed and we are glad he did, as the view over the bay towards the mosque, with the sound of the Atlantic Ocean lapping at the shore was tremendously evocative, moving even, as the sunshine beat down on a true picture postcard scene. I could have stood there for ages but Wolfie was being a little impatient due to his foot so we had to leave prematurely, which was unfortunate. On the way back to the city, we noted the new tourist developments that were being thrown up, along with the mismatch of buildings that demonstrated the chaos of the place. Expensive offices sat next to slum dwellings and it was this disparity that was the catalyst to a major terrorist incident in the city on 16 May 2003 when 13 suicide bombers from the shanty towns of Casablanca - many of which we could see from the train - killed themselves and 32 others in public places across the city. There is a memorial to the victims in Place Mohammed V in the heart of downtown. As we were driving through the city, our driver asked us whether we wanted to go to the tourist beach strip, which we declined, before suggesting we could go to a spice and carpet market in one of the backstreets, with the two establishments being opposite each other. Whether these places are favoured by locals or not I'm unsure, but we went anyway but the hard sell started to happen again so we said we had no money and jumped back in the cab. Oddly, the carpet shop salesman, like Ahmed earlier in the day, kept saying "Luvvly Jubbily" as if acting like Del Boy would make it more likely we would buy yet more goods we didn't actually want or need from them. We could also have gone to Rick's Cafe Americain but the film Casablanca was not actually shot here and this cafe has been set up afterwards by an entrepreneurial American diplomat. I think one American tourist on our mosque tour was fooled into believing it's authentic though.
With directive in hand, the taxi driver drove us to our next destination, the shining white Cathedrale de Sacre Couer on one corner of the tranquil Parc de la Ligue Arabe. While we drove, we saw a guy selling two puppies at the side of the road - poor puppies! We gave the driver a handsome tip to which he said he would drive us back to Casa Voyageurs railway station, some 2km away and where we had to catch our train back to Rabat, for free. Feeling we would have to tip him further and with the tram a mere six dirhams each, we ended up declining his generous offer. There was some kids party thing going on in the church, which had a large bounty castle and trampoline in it. The lustre of the stained glass windows in a myriad of colours was intense in the African sun yet oddly we were not allowed beyond the front door as apparently it was a private event, even though it was clearly being advertised and was fifty dirham to get in. Consequently, we had a strange day in which we were permitted access to a mosque yet barred from entering a church, which was most strange. We were at the church as it marked the start of a walking tour guide of the city highlighted by the Lonely Planet guidebook which took in a range of architectural sights of the downtown area, most of them built in the French colonial era between 1910 and 1939, when the city exponentially grew in size. The church was one such example of this, having been built in 1930 in typical Mauresque style, which incorporated Islamic architecture with Parisian Art Deco and added carved facades to the mix. Many of the old civic buildings adopted these motifs, including the old wilaya (the old police headquarters) which has a modernist clock tower atop of it. This lights up in the darkness and can be seen down Avenue Hassan II from Place Nations Unies/Place du 16 Novembre. The palais de justice, old post office building and Bank al-Maghreb are all heavily influenced by the Moroccan style with the large door and entrance of the former based on the Persian iwan or entry into a courtyard of a Medersa. Outside the post office there is a little square where there was quite a bit of life going on, I think around feeding the birds, which had all congregated around the central fountain. There were people dressed in traditional dress dolled up with gold bells which they were clanging - very much like Moroccan Morris dancers I assume - while there were sellers selling bird seed and nuts with which to feed the birds. It was all very interesting but Wolfie needed another sit down so we continued to the next stop on the tour, La Princiere, Salon de The.
In a predominantly dry country, tea houses are a big thing and the drinking of mint tea is a significant part of the culture. I've started to get into it, having been put off peppermint tea at home due to its intense and largely synthetic flavour. It's fair to say that La Princiere has seen better days, attested by the white crown that sits on the roofline. The facade is impressive but the interior looks quite worn, a grey coating perhaps covering the original features. The tea and biscuits were delicious and we sat outside, sadly out of the sun and opposite a concrete monstrosity of a building, to people watch. This was very interesting, doing as the locals do, but we were pestered by shoeshine boys and a bloke with his guitar who insisted on singing to us for thirty seconds despite us telling him we weren't interested. He eventually buggered off to pester another table while I had to endure a particularly bad squat toilet which was far from the highlight of the trip. The rest of the walking tour largely involved looking at hotels from the colonial era, some of which having been restored to former glory and one just a shell of what it once was as the owner does not have enough money to restore it but the authorities refuse to tear it down (the Hotel Lincoln). We were expecting at least a full exterior but no, half of the building, including the roof is missing and it's being held up by scaffolding. You could still see the black tiling where the bathrooms once were. I do hope this can be resorted like some of the other hotels, which are splendidly done and make nice additions to the colonial streets which largely just hold offices these days. The tour ended with a few beautiful golden facades, namely on the post office building and the Le Matin/Maroc Soir building which was in a nice state of dilapidation. We also saw a favourite haunt of Albert Camus, Petit Pouchet with its original bar counter, before seeing a very old cinema which looks like a 1950s example straight out of Britain (Cinema Rialto). All of this demonstrated the wealth of architectural beauty in the city and it was great seeing it first hand, along with exploring the range of shops, restaurants and bars in the heart of the city.
I say bars as finding places to drink was surprisingly easy in Casablanca, far more so than in Rabat and Marrakech, which made me question why we didn't stay over in Casablanca (to be fair there are far fewer things to do for tourists in Casablanca even though it's the largest city in Morocco). With around two and a half hours left in Casablanca, we went to the Hyatt to discuss our plans, where we discovered that a beer was an eye watering 85 dirhams. I'm not paying £6 for Becks so we opted for another mint tea as we contemplated our next mood in a bar which went a little over the top with the dark wood. Interestingly, we had to pass through a metal detector to get into the hotel, which is something I haven't experienced outside of Russia. Anyway, for 100 dirhams we got a pot of mint tea between us and some tasty macaroons - I managed to spill icing sugar all down my trousers - which wasn't that bad value considering we got four glasses each out of the pot. It wasn't as nice as the mint tea from the little tatty cafés though, and far less interesting from a people watching perspective as I imagine the average Moroccan couldn't afford these prices. We had hoped to take in a French restaurant in Casablanca but sensing time was against us and needing to catch the 7:35pm train back (there's no such thing as an open return here), we opted instead to go to the bar made famous by Camus (in the end we went to a French restaurant in Rabat Agdal called La Entrecôte, where I had an entrecôte in Roquefort sauce with a glass of Moroccan white wine called Terre Blanche, which is remarkably crisp (yes I know steak should be served with red wine and the waiter clearly knew that too but Morocco is more famed for whites than reds, with whites more consistent for quality here)). We walked around the main square of Casablanca a little longer before heading towards Camus's way, reasoning that by doing this, we could walk one stop closer to the main railway station. However, we became distracted by another bar called Source Atlas so popped in there for a drink instead. It was a sports bar showing top flight Moroccan football and serving Stork, a beer we had not yet tried. There was a little betting booth in one corner and a range of locals all fully engaged with the game, which I think involved a local side. The quality was very good and it was fun watching the match, while the staff spoke to us briefly about Moroccan football as a whole. Occasionally, itinerant sellers offering nuts tried to sell their wares, moving from bar to bar and table to table trying to tempt people to buy their snacks. We weren't hungry but many people did. The smoke in the bar was quite thick and intense, playing havoc with my blocked nose and sore throat, but despite its rough and ready guise, we enjoyed being here, with one of the punters even telling us the story behind the name of the pub as we left. Sadly we did have to leave to catch our train and after missing a tram due to the fact we had to use different pre-paid cards to get on the platform, we couldn't use the same one twice, much to Wolfie's annoyance, we got to the train station in time and caught our train back to Rabat after a wonderful afternoon in a beguiling, schizophrenic and yet enchanting city.
