Day Trip to Casablanca

As Sunday was the last ‘real’ day we had of holidays, my roommates and I decided to take a day trip to Casablanca. We hopped on the train at about 9am with our buddy Luigi, however both Hajo and Caleb were feeling very under the weather so the trip was a bit much for both of them. After accidentally sleeping through our stop, we got off at the edge of the city and had to pay a pretty large cab fare ($6 is a LOT for a cab in Morocco) to get to somewhere near the middle of the city.

We started our adventure at the Hassan II Mosque right on the ocean. It’s the third largest mosque in the world, after two in Saudi Arabia. After paying about $8 to get in, we had a nice tour of the insides. As a Muslim however, I thought it was exorbitant to have to pay to get into my own place of worship. It seemed like a scam to me, but I wasn’t willing to wait an hour and a half for prayer time to go in. The insides were beautiful with incredible craftsmanship and beautiful ceilings. The majority of the materials were from Morocco, but the architect was a frenchman who was not at all Muslim which is super interesting.

The rest of the day was spent wandering the city. Finding misspelled graffiti:

Taking selfies outside McDonalds:

Seeing a man selling baby chicks which are apparently a normal children’s toy:

Finding a massive Cathedral which has since been converted into a theatre:

And catching a really nice afternoon nap in a public park:

We then took a very sick Caleb home, only to be met by riots which forced us to stay in the train station while cops in riot gear ran outside. This time I’m not sure if it was soccer or something else… The bet is still on soccer. All in all a great day