Week no. 3: Sightseeing Casa and El Jadida
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Alexine
22 Juli 2014 | Marokko, Casablanca
This week is my third week in Morocco. Until last weekend, all I had really seen is some small parts of Casablanca and a little of Rabat. The past weekend was about discovering new parts of my temporary hometown, full tourist mode. Luckily, I did not have to discover the city by myself. My fellow-Nourie Emma was in Casa from Thursday until Sunday to take on the sightseeing practices with me.
First some surprises here in the aiesec flat. As you might now, Moroccans take hospitality very serious. You’ll get invited to stay at people’s houses for dinner, very easily. This apparently also works the other way around, for Emma and I discovered new people crashing on the couches in the flat every day from Friday until Sunday night.
Thursday night was the night of the LC Anfa Ftour. We had a nice traditional ftour at a cute café in Casablanca, not far from our flat. It was nice to catch up with Emma and Julliette, another fellow-Nourie, about our experiences so far in Morocco. We have discovered that the Moroccans have a fascination for taking selfies. They do it everywhere, with everyone, at every possible minute! The chanting noises they make leading up to the moment they take the selfie, is comparable to the noise we in Europe usually make when someone is about to drink an alcoholic beverage really fast. (You know: the hey-hey-hey that goes faster the emptier the glass gets) It is a funny thing to see everyone super excited for taking a picture with as many people as can fit in it.
After the ftour, Julliette returned home to Rabat and Emma stayed with us in Casablanca for the weekend. Since I had to be at my internship the entire day on Friday, Emma got to experience firsthand the special kind of wifi that we have in the LC Anfa flat: Outside WiFi. As the name suggests, it only works while standing on the balcony or risking your live hanging out of the window. This night, we decided not to have a traditional meal, but have ordinary pizza and pasta at the restaurant near our flat.
On our way there, something we see here every night happened: The mosque in our street is too small to fit all the people for the evening prayer. Therefore, people pray in the street in front of it. Nothing special, maybe, until you realize that Boulevard Bir Anzarane is a very crowded two way boulevard with a lot of traffic. People take their time to pray on the road and cars, buses and taxis have to find their way to the other part of the road, going against the traffic, to continue their journey. It is an interesting sight that would never occur in Amsterdam (everyone in the cars would probably curse severely at you for doing that), but here it is all just fine!
Saturday was the tourist-mode in Casablanca. We planned on walking a route that was set out in one of our travel guides, but since we already took a wrong turn before leaving our street, we ended up taking a taxi to the ending point and walk back from there. We’ve spend quite some time just wandering through the medina. It was a beautiful experience to see the crowdedness of the place, even during the day when most other places are completely empty because of Ramadan.
We also witnessed some less beautiful things, to say the least. First of those things was the smell of a market full of fish, which was presented there without any cooling systems underneath them… It was disgusting and the only thing the salesman did to make the fish look somewhat attractive was pour some water over them every now and then. This was not for us. The second shock also involved an animal. When Emma got all excited about seeing living chickens there at the medina, we were both quite surprised by the fate awaiting these animals. The guillotine-like devise created to slaughter them at the spot, was right next to them.
After our experiences at the medina, just walking about and be amazed around every corner, we went on towards the main tourist attraction in Casablanca: the Hassan II Mosque. It is an impressive, gigantic mosque located on the Atlantic shore. The entire surrounding of the place is one of the most beautiful religious places I have ever seen in my life. I am not going to describe it in full detail; pictures say more than a thousand words, especially in this case. And, being inspired by the selfie-loving Moroccans we met on Thursday, we took many of those there. On our route back to the flat, we came across a cute little bakery where all sorts of beautiful and delicious pastry were screaming our names, so we bought a lot and paid almost nothing; how I love Morocco!
Besides this brilliant place, we were very surprised by the incredibly luxuries found in Anfa, the high end part of town. The pictures we took there could easily be taken somewhere sunny in the States or in Europe.
On Sunday we decided to visit the former Portuguese city of El Jadida. It has maintained the old centre built by the Portuguese in the 16th century and it is only an hour and a half away from Casa. Upon our arrival in the old town, we could clearly see that this is a city that is listed in every single travel guide on Morocco: we had not seen that many Europeans walking about since our arrival in Morocco! And instantly we felt almost a bit ashamed for them, for most of them clearly missed the note that it is Ramadan and that modesty in clothing is appreciated… We spend the afternoon in the city just walking around and looking out over the Ocean. There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon!
After our trip to El Jadida, Emma continued her journey to Essaouira the next day and for me another week of working at my internship has already started again.
Bigger and better stories soon to follow!
Kisses from Casa
First some surprises here in the aiesec flat. As you might now, Moroccans take hospitality very serious. You’ll get invited to stay at people’s houses for dinner, very easily. This apparently also works the other way around, for Emma and I discovered new people crashing on the couches in the flat every day from Friday until Sunday night.
Thursday night was the night of the LC Anfa Ftour. We had a nice traditional ftour at a cute café in Casablanca, not far from our flat. It was nice to catch up with Emma and Julliette, another fellow-Nourie, about our experiences so far in Morocco. We have discovered that the Moroccans have a fascination for taking selfies. They do it everywhere, with everyone, at every possible minute! The chanting noises they make leading up to the moment they take the selfie, is comparable to the noise we in Europe usually make when someone is about to drink an alcoholic beverage really fast. (You know: the hey-hey-hey that goes faster the emptier the glass gets) It is a funny thing to see everyone super excited for taking a picture with as many people as can fit in it.
After the ftour, Julliette returned home to Rabat and Emma stayed with us in Casablanca for the weekend. Since I had to be at my internship the entire day on Friday, Emma got to experience firsthand the special kind of wifi that we have in the LC Anfa flat: Outside WiFi. As the name suggests, it only works while standing on the balcony or risking your live hanging out of the window. This night, we decided not to have a traditional meal, but have ordinary pizza and pasta at the restaurant near our flat.
On our way there, something we see here every night happened: The mosque in our street is too small to fit all the people for the evening prayer. Therefore, people pray in the street in front of it. Nothing special, maybe, until you realize that Boulevard Bir Anzarane is a very crowded two way boulevard with a lot of traffic. People take their time to pray on the road and cars, buses and taxis have to find their way to the other part of the road, going against the traffic, to continue their journey. It is an interesting sight that would never occur in Amsterdam (everyone in the cars would probably curse severely at you for doing that), but here it is all just fine!
Saturday was the tourist-mode in Casablanca. We planned on walking a route that was set out in one of our travel guides, but since we already took a wrong turn before leaving our street, we ended up taking a taxi to the ending point and walk back from there. We’ve spend quite some time just wandering through the medina. It was a beautiful experience to see the crowdedness of the place, even during the day when most other places are completely empty because of Ramadan.
We also witnessed some less beautiful things, to say the least. First of those things was the smell of a market full of fish, which was presented there without any cooling systems underneath them… It was disgusting and the only thing the salesman did to make the fish look somewhat attractive was pour some water over them every now and then. This was not for us. The second shock also involved an animal. When Emma got all excited about seeing living chickens there at the medina, we were both quite surprised by the fate awaiting these animals. The guillotine-like devise created to slaughter them at the spot, was right next to them.
After our experiences at the medina, just walking about and be amazed around every corner, we went on towards the main tourist attraction in Casablanca: the Hassan II Mosque. It is an impressive, gigantic mosque located on the Atlantic shore. The entire surrounding of the place is one of the most beautiful religious places I have ever seen in my life. I am not going to describe it in full detail; pictures say more than a thousand words, especially in this case. And, being inspired by the selfie-loving Moroccans we met on Thursday, we took many of those there. On our route back to the flat, we came across a cute little bakery where all sorts of beautiful and delicious pastry were screaming our names, so we bought a lot and paid almost nothing; how I love Morocco!
Besides this brilliant place, we were very surprised by the incredibly luxuries found in Anfa, the high end part of town. The pictures we took there could easily be taken somewhere sunny in the States or in Europe.
On Sunday we decided to visit the former Portuguese city of El Jadida. It has maintained the old centre built by the Portuguese in the 16th century and it is only an hour and a half away from Casa. Upon our arrival in the old town, we could clearly see that this is a city that is listed in every single travel guide on Morocco: we had not seen that many Europeans walking about since our arrival in Morocco! And instantly we felt almost a bit ashamed for them, for most of them clearly missed the note that it is Ramadan and that modesty in clothing is appreciated… We spend the afternoon in the city just walking around and looking out over the Ocean. There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon!
After our trip to El Jadida, Emma continued her journey to Essaouira the next day and for me another week of working at my internship has already started again.
Bigger and better stories soon to follow!
Kisses from Casa
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
