Casablanca-Marrakech

DANI: After happily being shown to our room (which hopefully had seen better days) we headed for the tourist information and found a friendly and chatty fellow working there. He asked us lots of questions and was helpful although he only had one map of the city...so we just looked at it and tried to make mental notes. We wandered happily enough in the vague direction of getting some dinner. We walked and eventually found the destination I had hoped for: Rick's Café. While I try to do my best to ignore the tourist traps this one I couldn't miss. We went inside and surprisingly this was a fancy place; white table clothes, decked out waiters with hats like those in the movie, elegant! We made our way to a lounge where we sat and the waiter went to the large screen TV and restarted the movie just for us. So, in joyful bliss after what I can only describe as lunacy, we shared a wonderful dinner while watching Casablanca in Casablanca! After our brains fully recovered we ventured back into the maze of streets and headed home. Thankfully Mark has a decent internal compass and he got us home through the maze of the old city streets.

5/30, Casablanca cont.
DANI:
We woke up early (actually at 3am due to the buzzing of scooters and honking of horns) and got going around 7. After a nice breakfast, we ventured with our "hotel provided at an extra charge" driver to the Hassan II Mosque, one of the few (only?) that non-Muslims are permitted to enter. We paid the admission and were given a guided tour in English. Please go search this place out on the internet...I will not do justice to its enormity. We removed our shoes as we entered and headed into the main prayer room (for men). I was amazed by it's massiveness (we were told that 20,000 believers could pray here and another 5,000 women in the upstairs women's prayer areas). The opulence was astonishing. I was overwhelmed with emotion most of the time we were there...tears welled in my eyes more than once. I couldn't imagine the expense of building this place and yet the poverty in the streets. We were ushered around and given many facts. We never stepped foot into any of the designated women's areas, except for the public toilets of which I found the women's to be a hole to squat above..no lie. Mark reluctantly told me that the men's were quite nice although lacking paper. We went into the room where the men wash before going upstairs for prayers, this too was a beautiful area but again I was emotionally torn as I liked the idea of washing clean before presenting yourself to God while at the same time prickling when our guide said that if you do not do the ritual washing, God will not hear your prayers. This is my first time in a Muslim country and Morocco is very open to the west. But I was saddened that in this beautiful place grace didn't seem to be allowed.

Our driver took us all over the city, "sightseeing" I guess, and we ended at the train station to catch our train to Marrakech. Rather uneventful (other than the lively conversation happening between our fellow passengers...in Arabic). After the th ree hour ride, we arrived and headed to find a taxi and our reserved accommodation. The ride was a good one with a nice driver who spoke enough English to keep us from feeling uncomfortable. We got to the medina (old city) and a man told our driver he couldn't go any further and that he (and his son) would carry our bags and get us to our riad (think bed and breakfast in a traditional home). They hustled us through the winding, narrow streets (I think trying to keep us from getting any baring) and proceeded to then hound us for more money. It was a gut wrenching experience. While we know that we are unemployed and homeless, they do not. And, even given our situation, we are quite wealthy in comparison. We gave them some money and were ushered into our place by a nice guy roughly our age. He poured us some Moroccan tea and let us relax. The place was stunning. We were in an internal courtyard which is open to the sky. There are three floors with rooms that circle the courtyard. The room and patios are comfortable and beautiful. We filled out our forms and ordered some dinner (Mark will tell you more on that). It was an amazing transition to a peaceful place...so much so that neither of us wanted to check out the environs that evening (and didn't).

DINNER by MARK (I'm telling about it, not making it):
We had perused the dinner menu after arriving earlier in the day, as they didn't keep much on hand. Whatever you wanted they would go out and get via the local market. So, Dani had chosen a cous cous-chicken dish while I went with a lamb something ma-bob cooked in a TANGER (a traditional small clay oven with a removable tee-pee like top). We could smell the aromas coming from the kitchen a little before 7:30, our scheduled dinner time. We sat with anticipation. Our host showed us to our seats where they had set a stark white table cloth, sprinkled dried red flowers and had two small candles lit. I felt as if we had entered a true oasis, or I was supposed to be proposing. Uh oh, I had forgot the ring.

The evening was cool as the sun had already started to set and soon our food arrived to tingling stomachs. Dani's couscous was in a deep dish about eight inches in diameter, topped with squash, carrots, and asparagus arranged to form an asterisk with chicken at the top. It looked amazing, and it was enough for three or four people. The tee-pee top was lifted off my dish and there was a dark sauce covering the bottom with a healthy serving of lamb circled by large dates with almonds balanced on top. The smell was enticing, but the taste was so much better. A perfectly balanced spicy sweet ran through the fall-apart tender lamb. Definitely one of the best meals I've ever had. I bragged a little and then gave Dani a taste.. and she agreed that it was wonderful. I generously offered to share and also enjoyed the couscous and vegetables. The dates were an added welcome, as I figured they'd help keep things going. Everything was fabulous.

We had only ordered two dishes and one dessert, which came by the name of Moroccan delights. When the tray of candies arrived we both knew there wasn't room, so we sampled a few and then wandered peacefully back to our room.