Casablanca

In keeping with the tradition to spend winter holidays somewhere warm, Marko and I decided to head to Morocco. Choosing the destination was done by process of elimination. Since the vacation was quite short, we didn’t want to go too far so we wouldn’t have to spend half the time traveling and dealing with jet lag. It had to be somewhere warm which left northern Africa and the Middle East as possible destinations. We ruled out Middle East immediately, we crossed off Egypt because we had already been there, same for the Canary Islands. That left Morocco and Tunisia as possible destinations. Although we haven’t been to Tunisia yet we ruled that out because I think it may be too touristy. And although we had been to Morocco before, we only touched the northern part where we arrived by ferry from Spain. So the decision was made to go into the heart of Morocco and see the desert as well.


We arrived in Casablanca on December 31st so we spent New Year’s Eve there. When planning the trip I had a mental image that we would look for a place to spend the evening outside, perhaps near a beach. But it wasn’t all that warm after all, the temperatures dropped to below 10 degrees Celsius at night. We found a restaurant with dinner and a show for the evening, it was actually outdoors but they placed gas heaters at each table so it was quite enjoyable.


Casablanca is a modern city with lots of noise and traffic and not much to see or do except to visit the Hasan II Mosque. I was impressed with the beauty of the mosque and even more impressed that this was probably the first time ever that I visited a mosque where women weren’t required to cover their hair.

Our main destination of the trip was Marrakech and so we took a bus to get there. The bus station was new and modern with Wi-Fi coverage. They sold us bus tickets with assigned seats and they checked our backpacks as if we were at an airport. Our bus was modern and air conditioned and the road from Casablanca to Marrakech turned out to be a four lane highway all the way. Morocco has definitely modernized by light years from how I remember it when I last visited there over 27 years ago.