Morocco: Casablanca to Rabat

As we leave our 4 star hotel in Casablanca,, we say goodbye to the fanciest place we will stay this trip. Lucky we got to Casa so early that we managed to spend lots of time in the hotel. With the Spanish or French national basketball team. Who were sooooo tall!! I was so excited, but couldn't speak their language so chickened out of asking them for a game.... or just some pointers for our champions of Division 12 Perry Lakes basketball team. I finally uploaded some photos to Facebook, Benjo downloaded a really crappy TV series, Entourage and in the process crashed out the whole hotel's internet. We noticed that my photos were not uploading, so we walked down to the reception and saw lots of people on laptops becoming frustrated and opening up their wireless connections screen. Benjo felt bad (more over, we wanted to upload those photos!!) so he hacked into the hotel and fixed their internet problems. How nice.

We had a pretty cruisey day on our last day and night in Casa. We met the other people in our tour and headed out for a beer. The tour group went to a restaurant with very expensive meals, and as Benjo and I had other things we wanted to spend our money on (booze) we decided to keep walking. So they all bonded over dinner, and we walked the coast of Casa. It was really cool. Think of pretty coast line with hundreds of people (mainly young people) who have been fasting all day - now hanging out for cigarettes, food and fun. Well you can find all in bucket loads. The only thing we struggled with was finding the right price restaraunt that sells food and coffee. So many places had great menus, however because it was Ramadan, they have closed their kitchen.

We found a little place that was totally empty, and feasted on a 5 course meal for about $15. Sucks to be the tour group, who probably paid that for an entree. Haha. We win that game. We also got our fix of wanting to have cous cous and a targine. The natural progression after dinner - clubs. Hey, it was a happening Saturday night in Casa, do as the locals do... well we tried. We walked to a few night clubs very hesitantly. In Spain, a night club is a whore house, so we were very cautious, especially as the women seemed to just walk around, whereas the guys were the ones going in and out of the clubs. all of a sudden, we realised what country we were in, and realised that we were so unlikely to find strip clubs and the like in Casablanca at anytime, let alone during Ramadan....so we let our hair down - literally.

We walked into 1 club on the beach, where we were stopped and asked to pay 70Dirhams for entry to an empty club. When we walked off, he came back and begged us to pay 50Dirhams to enter. Even with this very generous discount, the answer was Still, NO WAY. We checked out a few. As the night went on, they got busier and busier and the price got higher and higher. At its peak, we went to 1 place where we were allowed to have a free look (!!). They had white leather lounge chairs facing a stage and a bar at the back of the room. It looked like a set up for a show - but with no show - just pumping music at about 150 decibels.Oh, and we had to pay 120 Dirhams for entry. Screw that. We went to a bar instead. Free entry, reasonable drink prices and comfortable noise level (oh how I am getting old... I can't believe I said that).

Meanwhile whilst we were looking for places to experience the nightlife, about 200 families were trying to drive their cars into the "McDrive" at Maccas. It was crazy. As if MacDonald's in Morocco wasn't already one of the busiest places to go in Morocco (sooooo sad), they also had peak hour at about 11pm at night. They seriously had police guiding cars into their drive through! Oh my Goodness. considering people here are either super poor or super rich, and MacDonald's meals cost about 60 Dirrams, which is about AUS$10... How much was our 5 course meal?? Oh yeah, it was AUS$15. Needless to say the Clinique Obesitie directly acrosss the road from MacDonalds is probably also owned by MacDonalds too. Morocco - so full of surprises.

Before we leave Casa, I just have 1 great story of bartering in another language. Benjo wanted to buy something from a stall in the markets. He offered 40Dirrams, and the guy selling the goods said, "no, no. 35 Dirhams, only". hahaha! I love it. So we didn't feel the need to barter much more with this guy. Oh and on a side note, I drew with Ben in a swimming race!! Although he did beat me in 3 other races.... but I drew him on 1 race!!