Monday, February 19.  I leave tomorrow (7:20).  I go to Paris for two nights, but only as reconnaissance for a longer trip someday with Yoriko.  No pictures, no story.  I’ll do a Morocco Wrap story when I can.

Today we traveled from Marrakesh to Casablanca.  Very boring.  Most of my time in Casablanca has been in heavy traffic.  Lunch was my last chicken tagine and it was very good.  In the afternoon we got our first tour of a mosque, one of the largest in the world.  The tower is the tallest one for any faith in the world: 684 feet.  Very pretty.  The interior can hold 30,000 people.  The problem is 1) the high cost which wasn’t spent on more pressing issues (built in the 1990’s) and 2) no one goes routinely.  There are mosques everywhere.  Prayers are five times a day, ten minutes each.  It makes no sense to go to this mosque.  It’s busy during Fridays in Ramadan, but otherwise it’s mostly empty.

After dinner many of us visited Rick’s Cafe, opened by a retired U.S. Embassy employee to satisfy visitors with a nostalgic love of the movie Casablanca.  It’s not a very close replica (the piano is a grand), but it was fun.  They run the movie on a screen all the time.  Those of us who had the movie memorized were probably irritating those who had never(!) seen it.

Quick story, which is good.  I leave at 4AM tomorrow.

At a truck stop. Fancy stuff.

Car wash.

It’s huge.

It’s big on the inside too. No shoes allowed. There are balconies on both sides of the main hall for women.

Hard to see, but the ceilings under the balconies are very pretty.

Faucets for men to wash themselves (three times) before prayers. There are others for women.

Lamp, gin martini, movie. Got it all in one photo.