From Marrakesh to Casablanca was a fairly straightforward three hour train journey and all went pretty much to plan arriving early afternoon, a little too early to check in, so we went for a walk around for a while and a long lunch in a nice local café. For supper we found (sort of!) a local fish and chip shop and while the decor and the service were of the Heath Robinson school of hospitality, the food was excellent. It was slightly unusual to be having a Norwegian pizza (White sauce, salmon and mushrooms) in the middle of Morocco, but it seemed appropriate.
The next day we headed off for a wander around town. The weather was pretty grey and murky, so we started by heading for the Hassan II Mosque. This was about an hour’s walk from the hotel, giving us a good view of the real Casablanca as opposed to the tourist-washed version. None the worse for it, but more interesting than something which is slightly staged and manipulated to appeal to us.
The Hassan II Mosque is spectacular. It is one of the few in Morocco which can be visited by visitors and, even then, only on guided tours. There are just a few of these each day and we did the 11.00 tour. Once through the entrance we were split linguistically with around six different language tours on offer. Our guide seemed fairly fluent in various languages, but he stuck predominantly with English given the tour he was doing! The capacity of the mosque is said to be 105,000, though only 25,000 of these (only!) can be inside, the other 80,000 are in the extensive grounds outside.
Our guide was very proud to tell us that this is the third largest mosque in the world, though subsequent research indicates that he may not have been using the standard decimal-based number system as he missed off a digit. It is actually the thirteenth largest in the world (the largest is the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca – one of the sites for the Hajj), but, in his defence it is the second-largest in Africa and its minaret is the second tallest minaret in the world at 210 metres. Whatever its league table position though, there is no doubting its presence. Water has an important status in Islam – it is considered a sacred, life-giving, and purifying element, reflecting divine mercy and power. It is a fundamental gift from Allah (often referred to in the Quran as rain or blessed water) that sustains all life, and its responsible use is a religious obligation. This is one of the reasons for the position which the mosque is built in – it is built on reclaimed land and surrounded effectively on three sides by the sea – a sea which was fairly boiling and fizzing when we visited! On the site previously was actually the Casablanca municipal swimming pool, but that vanished in 1986 when they started building the mosque which, astonishingly given its scale, was completed in just seven years. During the most intense period of construction, 1400 men worked during the day and another 1100 during the night. A further 10,000 artists and craftsmen participated in building and beautifying the mosque and they certainly did a stunning job with the decorated wooden panels, stucco and brass carving.
After the mosque we walked around the sea front getting suitably windswept and wandered into a café round by the El Hank lighthouse – an important navigational landmark considering the size of the port in Casablanca and the fact that it is the main base for the Moroccan Navy. A quick check on Marine Traffic indicated a lot of ships waiting in the bay for a berth to unload, though in the murky grey weather, we could only see a few of them.
Casablanca is the largest town in Morocco with a population of around 4.25 million in the greater Casablanca region. it is also the financial and perhaps business centre of Morocco, but given this status, it is not, perhaps surprisingly, the capital. That title rests with Rabat – the home of the Royal Family. Nevertheless, it is a big and impressive town, though not one that would perhaps be described as a top tourist destination.
Following a theme of changes of plan, our next one came in the evening back at the hotel. The travel company messaged us to say that the ferry the next day had been cancelled due to the weather in the Straits of Gibraltar, necessitating a good deal of reworking of our itinerary. We were given various options, but in the end, rather than staying an extra day in Casablanca we decided to take the fast Al Boraq train to Tangier the next day and stay the extra day there.