Casablanca- Morocco part 2

So we started our trip in Casablanca. There's not much to do there really. I got there the day before my sister and decided to just go walk around a little bit.

I LOVE to travel, but I HATE being harassed, and I'm pretty sure it is much worse for single women travelers. It wasn't too bad this first day, but I did have some guy that started walking next to me, talking to me, telling me that he was just trying to practice his English and wanted to make sure I felt welcomed in Morocco. Maybe.... but probably not really. He ended up taking me to this... place... almost like a shop but he said it was only there for the weekend with products he said were made by the Berber people. I don't know, maybe they really were, but I'm poor and I wasn't in the mood for shopping. I insisted that I just wanted to walk alone and left.

The up side to it was I ended up across the street from this super cute, old church. It also happened to be Sunday, the Sunday before Christmas AND services had just started. I totally crashed the service. I really wanted to take photos during the service but there was a sign asking not to. The services were in English and I found out most of the congregation was international school teachers. :) A couple of people outside the church (Moroccans) had said it was a Church of England church, or maybe they just said it was an English church and I assumed Church of England. The services seemed very Catholic, but I've never been to a Church of England service so I'm not sure how similar they are.

I already blogged about my sister arriving late and our INSANE trip to Chefchaouen that we took the following day. On Tuesday, April and I visited Hassan II Mosque, which is the 3rd largest mosque in the world. It is the largest one outside of Saudi. The place was BIG and beautiful. We took a scenic taxi ride through the city and then had lunch at Rick's Cafe, a place designed to recreate the bar made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the movie classic Casablanca. That was pretty much it for Casa.

Our hotel was ok... there were things that were cute about it and things that were annoying. The showers were not very good, the walls were bright pink, and the lights in the hallway/courtyard were on motion detectors with short timers, but it had wifi in the rooms and that's important. :)

Lobby of the hotel

fountain in the lobby

chairs in the lobby

our VERY pink room

a photo in our room showing the direction of Mecca for prayers

even the toilet paper was pink- we later found out all the rooms had pink toilet paper, but not all rooms were pink

the doors to the rooms

super cute, old church I happened upon

I love the playground next to the tombstones :) 

I think this photo makes it look bigger than it was-- it was THAT small

lots of cool graffiti 

just normal streets as we walked to the mosque

onions

olives

Hassan II Mosque

the ceiling can open up- CRAZY! that thing is HUGE

ablution fountains

This was part of the mosque but not really part of the mosque. It was a bath area. 

check out the size of those doors!

this place was HUGE