Contrary to some online sources, the origin of the name Casablanca is Portuguese, not Spanish. I was happy to learn about this because it seems to bring it closer to home.

We woke up by the Call to Prayer, and were awed by the magnificence of the Hassan II Mosque from our balcony:

The lobby and dining area were decorated with Halloween lamps and pumpkin patches. The hotel breakfast was impressive with plenty of local varieties and made-to-order omelet. I saw two young women enjoying their breakfast in very dressy dresses and minutes later saw them again checking-out with 80L daypacks. Only in Morocco, I guess.

The Hassan II Mosque

We walked toward the mosque but obviously it was not the common tourists entry. There were quite some policemen with full-length assault rifles guarding the place. They saluted to senior officers as they drove around checking security. We saw a large number of armed soldiers and policemen at the airports, rail stations, and palaces. William was concerned on what made them deploy so many armed guards. It reminded me my childhood in Beijing where there were soldiers patrolling Zhongguancun, the academic triangle of Beijing University, Qinghua University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, on foot and soldiers posted at almost all government agencies. Over the past decades in China all of them have been replaced by securities guards because soldiers in a professional army are too expensive to be wasted for security duties.

The mosque only accepts guided group tours. A guide is provided for individual tourists at certain times in a day outside of time to pray. We arrived at around 9:20 am. While waiting for our tour at 10, we visited a small museum at the visitor center. We saw some international tourists entered the museum without purchasing a ticket. They were located by the security guard and escorted out of the property. The museum tickets are only a couple of dollars. You would wonder why did they do that. Perhaps just because they could.

The museum gives a history of the construction of the mosque with samples of building materials and design styles. It is a good source of information, which will be appreciated even more after visiting the actual mosque. The museum has a dated but clean restroom as emphasized by almost every tour guide when talking about the mosque. We can confirm that.

Close to 10 am, people started gathering around the entrance which was located to the west side of the main hall. Some lined up to take photos with mosaic-decorated fountains. In tradition, a fountain carries significant social functions. The medina in Moroccan cities are divided into sub-communities with each one completed by a mosque and a fountain. This reminds me of the Temperance Foundation and Dr. Cogswell, whose tomb I visited in the mountain view cemetery in Oakland.

From afar, we could see the El Hank lighthouse in the morning mist. It was built in 1916 and towering at 167 ft high. That was where you find the beach of Casablanca, that you can reach by light rail lines.

People were started being let in the mosque. There were posted signs for tourists speaking different languages. While waiting for people to gather, we ran into a young man from Colorado who was traveling alone. He blended in the local life very well with only a half-empty shopping bag in hand. He said he had been in Morocco for ten days and would go to Fez in the afternoon. I asked about his experience in Marrakesh. He said it was great. He ignored all the locals who had hassled him into things and tricks. “Whatever they say in the end they would ask for money. Just don’t trust them.”

The main hall is amazing. It holds 20,000 men, with capacity for additional 5,000 women in a separate section. It was deigned by a French architect who was a friend of the king and made of all Moroccan materials except the chandeliers and two white columns.

We were instructed to put on our shoes upon exit of the main hall. Our tour guide gave some remarks on the steps. With the leaning sunlight, it almost felt like she was addressing at the Roman Senate.

Afterwards, we were led to the lower level beneath which was a huge and spectacular washroom. The center part of the main hall right above is a river with glass bottom. Water is a center of inspiration of life. The mosque is located by the Atlantic Ocean to echo that the ‘throne was on the water’.

As we walked out of the mosque, the weather was just perfect.

We checked out of our hotel and got another Careem to get to the Casa Voyageurs train station, which was the main train station of Casablanca and was further away from us. Our captain spoke good English and explained to us the differences between the small red taxis and larger white-and-green taxis. The red taxis can only go to local destinations while the larger ones can go to other places. William also observed that the larger ones were kept in better conditions in general. We saw some boys fighting in the street and saw taxi drivers chatting to each other at traffic lights. However, it was no worse than the condition of some major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Tianjin when I left China over 20 years ago. We never felt unsafe in China. Numbers will show Casablanca is a safer place.

The Train Ride

We got to the train station with plenty of time ahead. The Casa Voyageurs station has a large ticket office. Seeing a line, we tried the ticket machine. It supports a number of languages including English. We selected our tickets but couldn’t check out with my US credit card or Portugal debit card. Short in cash already, we had to queue at the end of the line. The line moved pretty fast. Within minutes it was our turn. An employee checked for our schedule and told us all first class seats were sold out. We settled for the second class but he had to pass us on to a coworker because there were only two working credit card reader and they were fixed to certain workstations. The coworker worked on his computer for a while and managed to find two first class seats for us. We thanked him and also purchased the tickets for the returning trip on the next day. Train traveling is in general very affordable and there is not much difference in term of ticket price between first class and second class.

Our six-seats first-class quarter was occupied by a family of three (two young women and a little girl), a middle-age man, and us. All seats are comfortably separated and face-to-face seats are considered adjacent. A young man from France was taking one seat but later moved out to the adjacent quarter as he had no ticket. Two hours into our journey, a local old man angrily stopped another young man with American accent, accusing him of cheating him out of his seat in the next quarter. The young man told the old man he had a ticket to the same seat. So far it seemed all the outlaws were foreigners. There was no air-conditioning and no airflow. It was hot.

The little girl was very cute. She was about four or five years old and was doing homework throughout the entire journey. She poked me with a small stick. Her Mom stopped her and explained to me that the girl was trying to talk to me in English but she only knew a few words. She told the girl, you could speak Spanish. I was not sure why they thought Spanish might work on me so I started taking in Japanese for fun. Later, she tried to poke the middle age local man. The man was sleeping all the way, using a towel to cover his face from the outside world.

After the train crossed the Oum Er-Rbia River, we saw deserts.

Marrakesh

When our train reached Merrakesh station, passengers for the next trip were already waiting to get on. We quickly departed the carriage.

Careem does not work in Merrakesh. Just in case, we also tried Uber which did not work. The taxi in Marrakesh is tricky, as warned by literally every travel site. From our observation, they operated more like mini-vans that collect passengers on their way. Or, an endless Uber-Pool with autonomous-control.

Thanks to Google Map, we got on a bus, which took us to the Jamaa El Fna stop. It was as close as we can get to our hotel, a traditional riad embedded deep into the old city or medina.

Getting off our bus, we passed by a small park with plants and flowers, and almost get lost in a big square where we saw African dancers, monkeys handlers, and snake charmes with real cobras roaming around! They were many sources of competing loud music and we would later learn that they would go on the entire day and night.

The Riad

While our path following the Google map got narrower and narrower, we wandered around to find our hotel the Riad Le Rubis. A riad is a traditional style of Moroccan house with an interior courtyard or a garden. There was no obvious path to the hotel as the way it is marked on the Google Map. The back alleys that lead to the deep medina are not drawn on the map at all. An old man sitting at the door of a Hotel Saleme noticed we looked lost and helped us with directions. Without his help, we would be in a big trouble. We went back to read the median survival guide on do not accept help from anyone rule and noticed there was another rule following it: ask help from shop owners.

The black gate was tightly closed but it opened in two seconds after we knocked. An old woman greeted us with smiles. She showed us booking records in a big notebook, without saying a word. We did not find our names. She then led us to a beautiful living area and gestured us to sit. Then she went in the kitchen without saying a word. After a long while, she emerged with a tray of mint tea in a delicate teapot and three pieces of bread. She poured us two glasses of tea, again without saying a word. The tea was very good. Mint tea is the most sought after bebida in Morocco. You tell the quality of a mint tea by the smell, taste, and the thickness of the color.

The woman made a few phone calls and we sat there waiting. After another long while, another manager-looking woman rushed in. She showed us the same notebook, and flipped pages for many more records and asked us to find our names. We couldn’t find our name. Obviously both women couldn’t read. She made a few more phone calls while we continued to wait. We saw they were using several phones at the same time.

The courtyard of the riad is occupied entirely by a pool that you can step down, which is completed with a fountain on the wall. The office is on the right, next to the entrance door. The living area is to the left. A small dining area is on the fourth side next to the pool with walls decorated with two old guns. There are an abundance of artifacts at every possible places. They are all tastefully chosen and contributed to the overall Moroccan aroma. I saw two guests left their room on the first floor and took a picture. From where they stood, the courtyard looked like this:

After a while, the first woman gestured us to follow her. We were shown our room on the second floor. It was the Atlas room. We are next to the Kutubiyya room. She then showed us a shaded rooftop patio that had a view of the square.

The door to the room was in tainted glasses. Sights from the hallway can be blocked by a thick cloth curtain, which was tied with a thick hemp rope. Numerous colorful little lights add to the already colorful room.

We found the safe in the closet but it was locked. The instruction book next to it did not match the model we had. We decided not to bother the owner to open it with the master key. Instead we hid our passports under the mattress.

We believe we picked a riad that was most beautiful and we believe many other guests made the selection based on the pictures posted online. One thing we could say after staying there for one night was that all the pictures did not adequately present the true beauty and charm of the riad.

The Souk

A souk is a traditional Arabic market embedded in stone-walled narrow alleys. The people in the medina are craftsmen living on selling their skills to visitors. The souk is the most dynamic and energetic part of city, with rigorous principals for locals to practice but no rules at all for visitors to follow.

People around the world are attracted to cities like Marrakesh and Fez for the souk experience of seeking and finding gems then haggling for a good price.

The medina is an example of coexistence-and-excellence. I saw a passing by moped bumped over a pile of merchants by accident while navigating the crowded ally but kept going on. The shop owner looked from afar but did not move. A guy from the next shop just came over and picked them up. Nobody said a thing and no one was angry. Life continues on.

There are so many cats in the ally. They are not bothered by the crowd at all. They are different from cats in America. They are all very slim. They will not walk to you for petting, and they will not walk away from people or even traffic. They hold their ground, totally ignoring the external world.

The Square

The Jemaa el-Fna Square is the de facto center of the city. It was listed as an UNESCO site as a Masterpiece of the oral and intagible heritage of humanity. It is exotic in the day and cosy at night.

The backdrop is the Atlas Mountains, which stretches around 1,600 miles through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. From near to afar, you see the square, the medina, and the Atlas.

We walked into one of a few fine dining restaurants on the edge of the median with a good view of the square in setting son. I ordered a tajine and William got a pasta. The pasta was not fully cooked but the tajine was tasty. We got to sit at a premier table near the glass wall with a great overlook of the market.

Two Chinese looking youth took a table next to ours. I asked them, and they said they were from Hong Kong. I have ran into many youth from Hong Kong traveling alone, in London, in Braga, and other places in their gap year. As a matter of face, out of my limited sampling, all Chinese looking young tourists I ran into in the last few months were from Hong Kong. A Wall Street Journal news article revealed that Hong Kong was the top among the largest donors to the US educational institutions. Between 2007 and 2013, Hong Kong donated $181 million to U.S. colleges, followed by U.K. ($147.6 million), Canada ($136 million), India ($97.5 million), Saudi Arabia ($97 million) among others. For reference, China donated $60.4 million and Japan donated $56.5 million in the same time frame. With a deep dedication to education and a rich experience as well as open-mind, youth in Kong Hong are posed to well positioned to steer their own journey. Those who look down on the youth from Hong Kong in their fight for freedom are terribly misinformed and deserve to be reeducated. The future generations of Hong Kong will thrive in their own city or anywhere in the world.

Following the guideline of keeping a low profile and disengaging at all cost, our experiences so far had been hassle free except an encounter with a shoeshiner on the market. Leaving William at the hotel, I went out for some true local taste around 10 pm. The market square was occupied by endless long tables and they were all full with patrons. There are menu-waving guys who would invite everyone passing-by to sit down so I did. I was arranged to sit next to a big group of young French tourists. They were obviously having a wonderful time as the waiters kept brining them small and interesting looking dishes and sometimes made fun of them, such as giving them a fake dish with a plastic snake on a tomato in a tajine pot. “We have no idea what are they talking about, “ one guy warned me. He said this was the first time he came to Morocco despite it was a popular tourists destination for French people. “They speak French but when they need privacy they switch to another language”. I ordered a plate lamb chops for 50 dirhams. It must be the most oily food I had had but unsurprising given the similarly oily food I tasted before in northwest China. When I was done, the Frenchman warned me again, “be careful”. The waiter showed up and demanded 100 dirhams for his tips. With full mental expectation, I joyfully bargained with the waiter. It went intensive at time with harsh words and specific threats, but we settled on 20 dirhams while the French group quietly looked in concern. The waiter and I parted our way hugged and kissed and felt like long lost brothers.

It was almost midnight when I walked back. The crowds in the street had been trimmed by the darkness. As I walked into back alleys I could sense many wary eyes on my back. I knocked on the gate of my riad and the owner showed up in a second. Guests do not have keys to the main gate. Obviously the owner planned on staying up the whole night to wait for knocks of late-returning guests.

From the rooftop patio, I could see the market was still full of people. The music and other sounds would continue to the next morning.

The owner is a young man. From the way the hotel is maintained and operated, he deserved every dollar he made out of this business.