So on our first day in Morocco, we stayed in Casablanca for a night to see Hassan II Mosque, go around the city and eat Moroccan food. You’d think it’s easy to do all that, but it isn’t. My friend and I don’t speak French or Arabic, except for the following: As-Salamu Alaykum, Shukran, Khalas, Au Revoir and Merci.

When we stepped out of Mohammed V International Airport it felt like we had taken a trip down memory lane. Old buildings, check. Old cars, check. I’m not kidding. It’s like sometime before the 90s people stopped buying new things. We paid 200-300 MAD for the taxi ride from the airport to our hotel (which is thankfully located next to the train station to Marrakech).

What I like about Casablanca, it’s simple and quiet.

A petit-taxi driver outside our hotel offered us a trip around the city visiting all the landmarks, he explained the route and what we did was get on a different taxi and go to the places he told us, it saved us a whole lot of money.

We first went to Hassan II Mosque which is majestic and lovely but not as beautiful as Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. And we walked around. A kid kept calling “Gazelle! Gazelle!” as we walked around and we just kept moving. We witnessed a fight between two petit-taxi drivers, and a lot of slapping and kicking happened. After having paid too much for our taxi ride from the airport we opted to walk around the city, which is surprising isn’t hard to do.

We took a break near the “Twin Towers” of Casablanca, which had gelatos and water.

As we try to look for the Royal Palace, a stray cat kept following us and a group of dogs were approaching. We kept shooing the cat to move away from us because you all know what happens when dogs and cats meet. But the cat seems to think we’ll protect her; man I almost shit in my pants as the dogs tried to kill (yeah I’m exaggerating) the cat. We arrived at the Royal Palace gate, alive, unfortunately, you can’t take pictures, so we left and looked for food.

It was really difficult to look for food,

• McDonald’s in Morocco is quite expensive for me; according to one Moroccan, “McDonald’s is for the rich”. Case in point, this Chicken wrap cost 20MAD which is about 10AED, without fries and drink. McFlurry cost 20MAD!!!
• Shops open late and close early. I’m not sure if this is because it’s Ramadan.
• Most restaurants serve Italian pizza, pasta and gelatos. As we were getting desperate we asked the other passenger in our petit-taxi (you can get in a petit-taxi even if it already has a passenger given your destination is along the way) for a good place to eat Moroccan food. We let him show us the way, and alas, he brought us to a restaurant where they serve Italian food, but really good food so I didn’t mind.

We had dinner at Angelo. I developed a liking for olives after the trip.

The next morning we went to the Royal Palace again. We tried the front gate this time and found out you can only get in and take pictures if you’re on tour (what a waste of time) according to the guards. So we returned to the hotel packed our things and waited for our train to Marrakech.

The bellboy noticed my Nooka watch and asked if he could have it; he even offered to pay 30 MAD for it for his daughter.