Costa Cruise 2009: Casablanca, Morocco

This is the 3rd recap installment of the cruise and the hubby and I took this past month.  Make sure that you check out Genoa and Savona and Barcelona!  I didn’t realize that we took so many pics of Morocco that I decided to break it up.  This part is about our morning around the port area, and the afternoon part will be about our trip to Rabat, Morocco.

We had an excursion planned in the afternoon, so we decided to get off the ship and explore the city of Casablanca.  For those of you who don’t know: Morocco is a country that is situated on the northwest coastal region of the continent of Africa.  The languages mostly spoken in Morocco are French (since it was a French territory for a while) and Arabic.  They speak French out around the city, but learn Arabic in school. It is also one of a few countries in the world (U.S. included)  where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live peacefully.

I was really excited to visit this city because the movie, Casablanca glamorized it.  Oh did they ever glamorize it.  This was so not the romantic city that I had pictured.  It smelled of sewer and cigarettes as soon as we got off the boat and continued to smell like that for the rest of the day.  There were some parts that were beautiful, and there were some parts where I felt like I was going to be kidnapped and human trafficked. 

There were cats EVERYWHERE!  They were really cute.  This was one just sleeping on top of a car…

You see that water on the street?  That was sewage and rainwater.  Yummy.

We walked to the Hassan II Mosque.  It was beautiful.  It seems like they put a lot of money into building and maintaining their mosques, but none into the city’s infrastructure.  Very interesting.

It was beautiful though.

It was right by the ocean.

This was literally the next block over from the mosque.  Notice all of the satellite dishes on the shacks.  Crazy!  I know that everyone deserves to hear from the outside world, but when you have trash, raw sewage, and animal parts (upcoming pics) in the street, why spend your money on satellite dishes?!  Their priorities are different than mine.  It is a completely different way of life.  The government is corrupt, and it is really sad.

Goat horns… There were a lot of these just strewn all over the sidewalks.  I guess when they are done eating the goat, they just throw them out wherever?

More satellite dishes…

We stopped at a little cafe to have some traditional Moroccan tea and bread.  Steve was making me laugh and I was trying not to spit my tea out on myself. haha. 

The tea tasted like a really sweet spearmint tea.  It was really good!  The bread was like a buttery sweet, but not too sweet, pillow that helped soak up the tea in my mouth.  It was amazing! 

We did see Rick’s Cafe from Casablanca, but I didn’t take a pic of it!  Dang it!

After our tea, we ventured into the downtown area.  I really liked the sidewalks…

Until I saw this..goat intestines…yes…goat intestines…

We walked back to the boat after our little adventure in the city.  Almost every place was closed for business since it was a holiday there so we decided to have lunch on the boat before our tour to Rabat!

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Tagged as: Morocco, travel