Martin is not in Madrid

In Casablanca we have visited mosque Hassan II. This mosque is huge – it is the third largest mosque in the world. The size is really impozant. At one moment can pray about 25 000 people inside, and about 80 000 people outside. The mosque is one of two mosques in Morocco where you can enter without being muslim. We did so…

Details of ornaments on the minaret

Detail of the ceiling decoration

The mosque is beautiful. The decorations are beautiful – all those ornaments, specially on minaret. Inside it is nicely decorated too with huge chandeliers. Everything is from marble. After all those cathedrals and churches in Spain I feel like this is finally something completely new, and I want to visit some more mosques. Another interesting thing is the it has roof which can be opened; however we were not so lucky.

Interior of the mosque

The mosque is quite new. It’s been designed by french architect Michel Pinseau in the 80s, and finished in 1993. It has been build directly on the side of the Atlantic ocean. One third of the mosque is above the ocean, and in some publicly inacesible parts you can watch the ocean thru the floor.

Missive titan door

Baths

There are also two baths – the first one is for worshipers to wash themselves before they enter to the mosque. The second one is turkish bath which is something like social meet point. Of course the baths are separated on women’s and men’s part.

Turkish baths

The last continent was invided! And it was really great!

Rich, Filippa, and Deyan

Me, Filippa, Deyan, and Richard went for a big weekend to Casablanca in Morocco. We stayed in nice Hotel Central in the old part called medina. Medina is the oldest part of every Moroccan town. It’s a part of narrow streets, small shops, crowded with the people. It’s just amazing. Like being in some movie. People are different. They dress differently. They look differently. Nothing like in Europe nor Asia nor any other place I have been to. The only bad thing about that was that in some parts I wasn’t feeling really comfortably to take pictures. But I don’t know, maybe I could… Also the rest of Casablanca is also interesting. Mix of African atmosphere, and European architecture in the middle. Slums in some parts of the town.

View over Medina from the roof of the hotel

We were accommodated in Hotel Central in the center of Medina as I said. This is really nice hotel, cheap, so I can warmly recommend it. However the reservation over Internet doesn’t matter here, or plays a role, but they simply don’t care. So if they want to put you to the rooms you haven’t requested, be though. This happened not only to us, but probably to everybody as we saw in the reception.

View from the window

Some people like Filippa should be closed somewhere else

Every day we had nice breakfast in the green painted room with a big mirror

Casablanca is the first city where I had used only taxis. Not only they are so cheap, but also that public transportation is not really recommended. I have experienced the wildest taxi ride in my life. The taxi driver was driving like crazy. No matter that there were people in the street – just horn. They had to jump away from the road. Once we got terribly ripped off in small taxis (petit taxi). We payed amount about €3 for the ride. [-; (normally costs €1.5). [-; The people are just incredible, they are trying to squeeze everything they can from foreigners. Once we were also offered to pay how much do we want. [-; Not bad... But it's still cheap trick that we pay more...

Small square in front of our hotel

As I have said, there is chaos in the streets. People are crossing streets everywhere. Red light on crossroads sometimes doesn't matter. It's safer to cross the streets in the middle than on the crossroads. Actually wild street crossing was sometimes lot of fun, and lot of adrenaline.

We were picked at the airport by some friend of Deyan's father who live in Casablanca for about 17 years, and we were invited to dinner to eat Kuskus, traditional Morocese dish. It was really excellent. Even later we didn't eat bad. Lot of seafood, fishes, etc...

Home-made Kuskus

And some people also like to drink (Filippa and Rich)

We really enjoyed food

I had oysters for the first time... And I feel like I can eat them really often...

Bad thing about Casablanca is that the beach is bad, really bad. Ocean is cold, beach is dirty, there were no girls (except Filippa) on the beach. We had to go to some beach club to swimming pool for a while. Well, that wasn't great neither since we got badly burned from the sun.

So the beach was really bad

Also another weird thing was that since Morocco is a muslim country, you won't see many woman on the streets. All the restaurants, cafes were full, but full of guys.

We did also some shopping, special trying to bargain. This is actually very funny. Specially when they are trying to rip you off. Well, it's very cheap, so doesn't matter so much, but it's not nice. But this happens everywhere, in Madrid as well. I won't recommend you any tactics, since tourist guides are full of them, and you have to just try it. Also if you go to do the bargain, be careful - quality is many times bad, really bad, and they will try to sell you just anything.

Mosque in the middle of the part with bargain shops - this is the nice part, in the real part I was too scared to take some pictures. Maybe I could, but I wasn't feeling like I would like to...

Links to all pictures at stromecek: [1] [2]