As Time Goes By

I was quite sad to leave Marrakech, even though we are returning in a few days. Our next destination was Casablanca by train. Not somewhere I particularly felt the need to visit but Darren wanted to on a whim about the film, and then we heard that it has the world's third biggest mosque (after Mecca and Medina) – the only active mosque in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter.
After checking into our hotel (basic, but fine for one night) we went out for a wander. Not that there's anything to see. Casablanca is the biggest city in Morocco, the sixth biggest city in Africa and essentially nothing more than a business centre. We walked around the big expensive hotels and Darren got his very dusty shoes polished, but otherwise there was nothing of note. Hassan II Mosque is also the tallest religious building in the world, and we headed towards it to get a closer look. We then saw the other side of Casablanca – derelict and half-demolished houses, the very poor almost living in a shanty town under the shadow of a mosque which cost $750 million to build. We couldn't go in at that point as visitor can only enter on set guided tours so we'd wait for that until the following morning. But we got a wonderful view of it as the sun set and could hear the evening prayers take place from outside the open door.
Walking back to our hotel wondering where to eat, all of Darren's wishes came true. There it was – Rick's Cafe. I thought it would probably be a bit of a dingy, touristy dive, but we thought we'd bear it in mind and maybe pop in for a drink later. Making use of our hotel's free internet we found out it was actually quite a posh (but not too expensive) restaurant, a labour of love by an enterprising American woman who was amazed that no-one had done it before. I could protest no longer and it became our destination for dinner. And it was an excellent choice. The staff were friendly, the food delicious, the decor very tasteful and there was a pianist playing all the old standards, including of course As Time Goes By.
The next morning we arose early enough to catch the 9am tour of the mosque. It was completed in 1993 after 6 years of round the clock work. It holds 20,000 worshippers, has an openable roof, and as well as the prayer hall you can view the ablution chamber and the hassans (public baths). It is grand, elaborate, immense and quite an amazing feat of architecture. It is rare to see such a modern religious building and it's ingenious to see how modern technology has been fused with traditional crafts (especially when they show you how they've hidden the hundreds of speakers!). Although the mosque is used daily, it is essentially a showpiece – the public baths have never been used and are just for demonstration. And as beautiful as it all was, this gave me a sense of emotional detachment which was quite strange.
We then returned to our hotel to check out and catch the train to Fes, the next destination on our Moroccan adventure...