Morocco - Casablanca

The bus to Casablanca took a mind numbing 8 hours. Weve really got out of the habit of long distance travel, and found it hard. Fortunately we arrived in Casablanca, and found a suitable hotel very quickly.

Casablanca is the biggest city in Morocco (4,000,000 compared to the next biggest with 1,400,000). A number of people had told us not to bother going there, but it is also home to the only Mosque thats open to non-muslims. So we went for the mosque, but we actually quite liked the city. Having been in so many small towns it was a nice change to be in a big modern city. We went out for 2 delicious pizzas, and then collapsed into bed.

Bright and early the next mprning we rushed off to the Mosque. You have to get a guided tour of the mosque, and we were really lucky as we were the only english speakers there, and got a guide all to ourselves, and wrangled student tickets for half price (full price was a lot). We saw 3 main parts. The first was the prayer hall. It was HUGE, bigger than any church weve been to anywhere. Its the thrid largest in the world, and can hold 25,000 people.

It boasts heated floors (alot of time is spent kneeling on them), a retractable ceiling (needed to keep it cool as there is no air conditioning), and some of the most amazing architecture. Nearly everyting (excluding the chanderliers) are from Morocco, the marble, wood, metalwork, plaster work, the lot. It was all done in 6 years, and really is an amazing achivement. The place was beautiful.

The second part was the washrooms. These are where the 25,000 worshipers come to wash before prayer. It is very hard to describe, basically made up of lots of fountains used for washing before praying, we will let the picture speak for themselves.

The third part was an amazing hammam. It has a wonderful turkish bath, and steam room, but has never been used due to managment disagreements.

Example of mosaics found around the mosque.

Having seen all this we high tailed it back to our room, and checked out to catch the train to Rabat.