14 January 2025 – Tuesday – The Flight and Arrival in Casablanca

The plane left the gate 30 minutes early. Luckily we were on it. We decided to get to the gate a little after the appointed boarding time. I guess once everyone is on board, the pilot gets to leave. Then we were told that we would arrive an hour early in Morocco due to tailwinds. That’s exactly what happened. 

Food on board was tasty. The short flight gave us about 3 hours to sleep. We disembarked and got through border formalities easily. Our guide had arranged a transfer to the hotel. As we walked outside, there was a man holding a sign for us. It was all quick and easy except for traffic going into Casablanca. We figured it was rush hour. 

Our guide had called ahead to see if the hotel had our rooms ready. We waited a short while, had some coffee from a local place recommended by Abdou and were given our rooms. We decided to walk into the city a bit to look around. 

The central market is a big meat and fish market surrounded on the edges by vegetable, flower, basket and antique junk sellers. It was fun to see. We tried to walk towards the port but it didn’t seem likely that we could get close. Casablanca is a huge commercial shipping port. 

When we returned to the hotel, Mark and Bev decided to try to nap and I scheduled a Hammam which I was told was similar to a sauna. Well it’s not exactly like a sauna. It’s more like a car wash. It starts in a marble room with a waterfall on one side and a wide bench on the other. The attendant washes you, oils your skin, and has you wait 10 minutes. Then rinse, scrub with a rough mitt on all sides,  although I refused the face scrub, then shampoo(that was a surprise) and finally oil again and rinse. That’s no sauna! But the exfoliating scrub was very invigorating. 

Abdou, our guide, made dinner reservations for us at Rick’s cafe. He also reminded me that the movie Casablanca was shot in Hollywood. We were joined by Maria, one of our fellow travelers who had just spent a month living in Ghana. We entered the time warp location of what seemed very much like the movie set  and had a tasty and very nice evening complete with piano player. 

Maria told us about a city El Jadida which is an old Portuguese fortress and cistern, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. We decided to visit there tomorrow since we will be touring Casablanca again at the end of the trip and staying here isn’t interesting enough for 2 more days. 

Time to crash now. Big day tomorrow. And we get to meet more people in our group. There will be nine of us all together