To conclude our cruise excursion on our Moroccan port of call that had first taken us to Rabat for lunch then visited a few highlights of the capital city we were driven back to Casablanca in order to hit a few viewpoints and to do some late evening shopping. Our ship, Caribbean Princess, wasn’t due to depart the port until midnight.
The drive out of Casablanca earlier in the day had been plagued by heavy traffic and it hadn’t improved upon our return. This did at least give me some opportunities to take photos from the bus, even though it’s not something I typically like doing. It was nice to see large-scale street art decorating the sides of several buildings.
The viewpoints we were taken to both offered us chances to take pictures of the Hassan II Mosque. The mosque was completed in 1993. The building is the second largest mosque in Africa and the minaret is the second tallest in the world. In both cases a mosque in Algeria beats it. The minaret is topped with a laser that shines towards Mecca.
The mosque was commissioned by King Hassan II after initially asking for a mausoleum for his father, Mohammed V. This was subsequently located in Rabat – and we’d visited that earlier in the day – but the king still wanted something for Casablanca and made that request known on his birthday in 1980. The location by the water of the Atlantic Ocean was deliberate but did then necessitate restoration work starting in 2005 after salt water got into the structural supports.
The second viewpoint was at El Hank, looking across the bay back to the Hassan II Mosque and giving more of a sense of scale of the structure when comparing it to the buildings of Casablanca.
El Hank is also the location of the El Hank Lighthouse, which at fifty one metres in height is the tallest lighthouse in Morocco.
It was then time to brave Casablanca’s traffic once more and to see some more street art as we slowly made our way to the shop that would serve as the penultimate activity on this full day’s excursion.
Our shopping opportunity was at a place called Exposition Artisanale, a large emporium that we were assured would allow us to purchase authentic Moroccan items, priced reasonably, and with no haggling required (or allowed). It was located across the street from a clock tower and the entrance to the old Medina and markets.
We bought some souvenirs then ended up chatting for ages with someone who may have been the owner after he realised that we, unlike everyone else in our tour group, were English. He’d been to England before and so wanted to give us a special price for some carpets which made us doubt whether the no-haggling rule was really enforced. We’re sure they were special prices but we’re not really carpet people.
The cruise excursion finished with a couple of fleeting photo stops. Firstly, it was back to the Hassan II Mosque to see it now that the sun had set. We’d hoped we could see the laser but it wasn’t really visible from our position. Then it was to snap the exterior of Rick’s Café, inspired by the place of the same name in the movie, Casablanca.
That concluded our day in Morocco. As we walked back towards Caribbean Princess we could see the lights flashing away in Skywalker’s Nightclub at the rear of the top deck. We freshened up and changed aboard then made our way there ourselves so that we could enjoy some music and keep an eye out for all the people returning to the ship after us. There were still large groups arriving well after our scheduled midnight departure time, likely those on tours to Marrakesh who’d then run into Casablanca’s traffic on their return.
In the next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series we’ll spend the day in Funchal, Madeira, finally making it there after an attempt years earlier was cancelled to deal with an emergency medical situation on the cruise ship we were on.