This weekend, I went to Casablanca! All of us (the students) wanted to get out of Rabat for a little while, so we decided to go to Casablanca for a day. Our class finishes at noon on Fridays, so we took a train after lunch. The train ride is only an hour and costs 32 dirhams (which is 4 dollars), so it was really easy to get there. We had hotel reservations, and the address of the hotel, but we were really sure how to get there. We had a really tiny map of Casablanca, which were trying to use, but it didn’t have very many street names, so it wasn’t so helpful. What made it even better was the fact that the minute we got off the train, it began pour. It was only a 10 minute walk to the hotel (once we figured out the correct direction to walk in), but by the time we got there we were pretty soaked. Because we were planning on leaving the next day, and didn’t want to bring to much stuff, none of us had brought a change of clothes, so that was great planning…
It stopped raining after a little while, but nothing in Morocco ever dries, so we were basically damp for the rest of day. After finding the hotel, we decided to walk around the city a bit. It looks a lot like Rabat actually. Every major city in Morocco has an Avenue Muhammed V (the grandfather of the current king), and Casablanca’s is basically identical to the Muhammed V in Rabat. There are a lot of palm trees everywhere and it is super crowded. We walked through the medina (old city) and were touristy and took lots of pictures. We decided to warm up a get some tea, so we stopped in a café for a bit. One thing that we saw when we were walking around was not one, but two KFC’s. We also saw at least 2 McDonald’s. There is also a TGI Friday’s in Rabat. With all these American restaurants, it seems a little bit strange that there are no Starbucks anywhere in Morocco…
We went to a restaurant in a part of the city called Ayn Diab, which is a pretty modern section that has a bunch of restaurant and night clubs. It was a nice restaurant but kind of over priced. But we wanted to go to a fancy place, so we enjoyed it.
The next morning we walked around the city for a bit and got breakfast at the same café that we had gone to a night before. They had a breakfast special that included eggs, bread, a hot drink, and orange juice for 18 dirhams (2.25 dollars), so we figured that was a good choice for our student budgets.
We also went to see the Hassan II Mosque, which is the second largest mosque in the world! It was gigantic and beautiful. We didn’t actually go inside, because you have to pay 60 dirhams to do that (and we missed the times for the tour), so we just wandered around outside, but it was still amazing. It is right next to the water, so we sat on the rocks and watched the waves for a while as well. It was really beautiful. Seeing the mosque actually made me feel like I was in Casablanca. Before that, I felt like I could be in any city anywhere, but the mosque was really special.

Then we took the train back to Rabat, where we learned first hand about the idiotic conductors that exist on Moroccan trains. Two of my friends had purchased round-trip train tickets when we left Rabat, thinking that it would be easier than buying two separate tickets. However, because the ticket back to Rabat did not have the correct date on it (it had the date of purchase, which was the day before the return trip, instead of the return date), the conductor refused to accept it. So he made them pay again, plus an extra 5 dirhams because we were already on the train. It was pretty infuriating. So now we know if you buy a train ticket in Morocco, make sure you have the correct date on it!

Happy Groundhog Day everyone!