Train ride was uneventful, at times the air conditioning didn’t work and it was very hot, otherwise the ride was quiet and fast.
Well…… Casablanca … We all have cities, places that we want to visit. Also we have sometimes imaginary pictures in our mind about places that we want to visit. Casablanca was on my list of “must see cities”. Also I had a picture in mind of the city: white buildings with blue windows frames, colorful flowers, blue ocean waves washing sandy beaches…….
We arrived in Casablanca at 5pm. In front of me there is real Casablanca: busy, crowded, dirty, smelly, polluted.
As soon as we came of the rail station we were surrounded by all the taxi drivers offering a ride to the hotel. We finally picked a driver that seems a bit less eager to rip us off (even though he still charged us 2 Euros more than the actual cost) and went to a hotel recommended by the Routard guide.
Every time we moved from one city to an other we learned more and more about travelling, arriving in new places and booking a hotel. For now our strategy is to choose a hotel from the guide, go there for the first night and next day, if hotel is good to stay there if not to find a better hotel. It is very difficult (especially in Morocco) to decide what hotel we would like just from information from the guide book or even Internet. Real life is different than descriptions. We stayed one night in Galia hotel, wasn’t too bad except that hotel was on the very busy street, therefore extremely noisy, on top of that there was a repair shop right in front of our window and the repair shops emanates really bad smells and pollution.
We changed this hotel to hotel “Mon reve”; Mark and I agreed that the correct name to this hotel should be “Mon couchemar”. Hotel was bad and we lasted there 2 nights. We barely slept and I was almost eaten by the mosquitoes.
In two days in Casablanca we tried to visit the city as much as possible. Some of the buildings, boulevards are nice but worned down, old, decayed, streets are dirty. It is strange that there are lots of people washing the streets, but still there is garbage and dirt everywhere.
We visited “Sacre Coeur” church (nothing like Sacre Coeur in Paris”, Arabe League Park, City hall, mosque, all city centre, the port.
It was intersting, but I failed in my efforts to like and understand the “charm” of the city.
Tourism information centre in Casablanca belongs to a “comedie noir” movie. The lady at the tourism office knew nothing about the city or city events. All she wanted to do is to sell us this “amazing city tour” for 45 Euros in a Mercedes. By the way in Morocco are lots of old Mercedes, it seems that Mercedes = status.
The highlights of our visit in Casablanca; one evening we went to famous Rick’s café. It is a beautiful old white buildings by the port. It has 3 open floors, the last one is a terrace overlooking the ocean. The inside of the café is beautifully decorated, the atmosphere is wonderful, waiters are wearing formal Moroccan outfits.
We went up to the terrace. Mark ordered beer (5 Euros!) and half bottle of wine for 7 Euros. I order a chocolate mousse for 5 Euros. The restaurant offered us little treats, some olive, little pastries, nuts. Everything was delicious! soft music in the background, beautiful scenery, it was a great evening! I will definitely go back to Rick’s café.
Last evening in Casablanca we have discovered the “best” part of town, quariter Gauthier. It was hard to believe that this quartier is a part of Casablanca: beautiful buildings, clean streets, women and men very nice westerly dressed.
These are the twin towers in Casablanca, part of the new town.
We had pasta dinner is a small café.
During dinner out of the blue Mark came up with the idea to go to Essaouira. I quickly glanced and read in the guide book about Essaouira. It took me only a few minutes to say Yes, let’s go to Essaouira!!!
We deserved a treat for all this time spend in Casablanca. We ended the evening by going to the trendiest ice cream place in town; the place had an impressive variety of ice cream and many ice cream combinations as well as very good looking cakes.
We were happy to leave Casablanca as well.
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