April 7 – 8

We landed in Casablanca, cleared customs, retrieved our bags and exiting looked around for the driver who was to meet us.  For this tour, and many others, Intrepid included free pickup from the airport if you were being transported to the lodging provided for by the tour.  Since we were coming in a day early, I asked them to book us into that hotel at their rate, which is usually competitive and allows for us to not have to change rooms once the tour starts. 

There was some confusion at the airport as there was more than one Intrepid Tours pickup and it took a few moments for the drivers to get it all straightened out.  Eventually all the arrangements were taken care of and we made the 40 minute drive to Hôtel Les Saisons, our lodging for the next two nights.  On the way, we had our first introduction to Moroccan hospitality, our driver effusively welcoming us to his country and providing us with lots of important sounding information, little of which would pan out in the end. 

In particular was his insistence that we use a black market ride share app, Careem, which is owned by UBER (which was banned due to regulatory issues and opposition from taxi unions).  During our stay we tried a number of times to use the service without succeeding and ended up either walking or using one of the local taxis. 

After arriving and checking in at the hotel, we hung out in our rooms until it was time for dinner, which we would enjoy at the site’s restaurant, Cities.  This would be our first encounter with the food we’d experience throughout our time in Morocco and also introduce us to interacting with its citizens.  Our waiter spoke what we thought was decent English and we were mostly able to productively interact with him with one exception.  After we ordered drinks, a gin and tonic for Joanna and a Casablanca (local beer) for me, she asked for a cheeseburger with avocado. 

I ordered a chicken tagine, the first of what would be many of this dish, as it seemed like I would eat one at every other meal.  A tagine or tajine is a Maghrebi dish, and also the earthenware pot in which it is cooked.  According to some sources, it’s history dates to the time of Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph.  The concept of cooking in a tajine appears in the famous One Thousand and One Nights, an Arabic-language story collection from the 9th century. 

The traditional tagine pottery, sometimes painted or glazed, consists of two parts: a circular base unit that is flat with low sides and a large cone- or dome-shaped cover that sits on the base during cooking. The cover is designed to return all condensation to the bottom.  That process can be improved by adding cold water into the specially designed well at the top of the lid.

I started with a bowl of Moroccan soup, also known as Harira, which is made with tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, warm aromatic spices, and often some type of meat.  It was very good, and I would eat more of it during our journey.  Next up was my Tagine with perfectly cooked chicken and some vegetables.  Joanna’s burger was equally good, as was the salad that also came, our server thinking she wanted it when she asked for avocado.  Needless to say, neither contained any avocado.  The good news was that our total tab came to 490 Dirhams, or roughly 52 dollars, which included a second beer for me and that mistaken salad. 

The next morning, we weren’t scheduled to meet with the tour until around 6:00 pm so we had full day to explore around the hotel.  First, we enjoyed the substantial breakfast buffet and then set out on a walking tour that we had downloaded, and which would eventually lead us to the medina, where we would, not surprisingly, get lost.  In Muslim cities, the Medina, or “old city,” serves as a historical and cultural center, often encompassing the heart of the urban area with its traditional architecture, bustling marketplaces (souks), and significant religious sites.  It’s a place where the community’s history, social life, and religious practices are deeply intertwined. 

We would visit one in every city we stayed in, but all of the rest would be as part of a guided tour.  We started on the outskirts and began to work our way into its heart and in doing so passed by an amazing assortment of vendors, including fabric merchants, poultry, pork, and beef butchers (with slabs of meat sitting unrefrigerated atop wooden counters), incredibly colorful displays of fruits, vegetables, spices and just about any other product one can imagine. 

We kept working our way through narrow passages jostling for space between the vendors, individuals zipping by on scooters, donkey carts, and two wheeled push carts, a hazard lurking around every corner.  It was totally exhilarating and an explosion of sight and sound.  After many twists, turns and dead ends, we exited to a street outside of the crowded center and found a café where we enjoyed a coffee and conversation with a couple from England. 

 We decided to try to use Careem to get to the harbor for a drink but could not get a car to come after many attempts and in walking found ourselves outside the famous Rick’s Café, immortalized in WWII movie, Casablanca.  While standing there, multiple tour buses pulled up and dropped off passengers for a photo moment before departing for other sights.  In the end, Marty and Kim walked to the harbor while Joanna and I walked towards what we thought was the tower at the Medina entrance but turned out to be the main Mosque in town.  On the way we encountered some men doing construction work on the street, and like that one time in Cairo, we witnessed them using tools to dig with while wearing flip-flops.

Discouraged we braved a taxi back to the hotel and A bit hungry by now, Joanna and I walked across the street to a small, crowded café and split a chicken wrap with fries and a Diet Coke.  The wrap was very good, nicely cooked chicken with tomatoes and lettuce, and along with the fries enough to old us over until dinner.  We returned to the hotel and hung out until it was time to head down to Cities to meet our tour guide and the other participants.  We’ll detail that meeting, our dinner that night, and our tour of the grand Mosque on the way out of town the next day in our next post.  See you then. 

Links

Hôtel Les Saisons: https://www.booking.com/hotel/ma/les-saisons.html

Careem: https://www.careem.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorGGhhCnyk527XAdQk2BhQZM3kHtDGlBnP84CBgkERUoiLOWRja