Casablanca to Rabat
The sun and sky were peaking out around the cloud’s when we got up, looks like the rain is going elsewhere. Hopefully not Rabat.
The hotel handled its breakfast with its usual flare. The waiter kept coming over to enquire about our wellbeing, Lou was getting a little creaped out by him. He asked if we were traveling with someone or with a group. When we told him that we were traveling independently he told us with all seriousness that he would have gone with us to look after us but he had to work.
Lou just looked at him flat eyes and said “Its ok we can look after ourselves.”
I just laughed and agreed, I did not really have to add anything to the statement, think she said it all.
Poor little waiter boy beat a hasty retreat.
On check out they tried to hit us up to pay for breakfast, again. Slight disagreement involving cashier running to supervisor. I won. Enough said.
We toddled off down the road to the train station and managed to buy a train ticket to Rabat without a problem. It was perfect timing really with only a couple of minutes until our train came. Its only about an hour from Casablanca to Rabat and the trains are clean and comfortable. I have a feeling looking at some of the local buses that I’m going to miss the trains after Fes.
You can tell on arrival in Rabat that money has been poured into this place and it presents itself as being very modern as you emerge from the train station onto the streets. The street was wide with palm trees down the center and clean. There were as many locals walking about in western clothes as not, particularly the younger people.
We headed to a budget hotel. We’re both 2-3 days over budget because of the bag saga. While we can recoup the money when we get back it really does not do us much good from this end of the trip. We chose the Hotel Splendid. It’s about 187 MAD per night (so about $13 - $14 each per night.) It’s basic but clean with hot water in the shower. Lou took a couple of deep breaths looking around the room (I’ve got to admit it is a big jump from the hotel we were in to this one) showing particular attention to the shower curtain in place of a door across the shower/toilet enterence. I’ll give her brownie points though she did not say get me the **** out of here!
After dumping our bags we went for a wander mainly into the Medina. At first we were looking to find a restaurant that we wanted to have dinner in that sounded really nice. If you reserve for dinner they supposedly meet you at the enterence to the Medina and guide you by lamp to the restaurant. We couldn’t find it but we did get a good look around some of the Medina. It’s very different from the Medina in Casablanca. It dates from the 17th century and certainly looks like money has been spent to fix it up.
We ended up at the Kasbah Des Oudaia. Its built on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic and is one of the oldest parts of the city built to observe / defend. Its main entry the Almohad Gate of Bab Oudaia was built in 1195 and is huge and very impressive. The ally walls inside the Kasbah are whitewashed painted blue on the bottom half and white on the top half apparently from Spanish influence.
This is about when we started noticing the cats. They seem to be everywhere. You know kind of like in Asia it seems there is a dog on every corner. Well here it seems to be cats and so far I have not see so much as one puppy dog.
After a few minutes admiring the view we headed back to the enterance and walked through the markets towards our hotel. The markets were selling everything from rugs, jewelery, ceramics, bags, shoes, fabric, clothes, etc etc. You name it they seem to be selling it with the usual flair. About half way down the market a man was cooking up a storm and his counter was 3 deep. I swear it looked for all the world like he was cooking hamburgers.
We found a little pastry shop around the corner from our hotel and wonder of wonder’s there were even women, in there as well.
In Morocco it seems the coffee shops, and there are a lot of them, are mostly the domain of the men. They sit for hours sipping their coffee. Not sure what else they do but they do spend a lot of time doing that.
So in we went pointing to the pastry we wanted out of the hundreds on display. I’m not kidding there were quite literally hundreds of them with about 6 girls on the counter. We sat back at a table and ordered our coffee from the waiter then just did that thing that mostly seems to be the domain of men in this country. We watched.
That little pastry shop did not stop with a constant influx of people purchasing pastries, mostly take aways, the girls were kept flat out busy the entire time we were there. You know there is an advantage to Morocco being a former French Protectorate, they certainly know how to make their pastry’s.
When we headed out and braved the streets for dinner we discovered most of the places were closed and would not open until later. So we had to cool our heals and wait. We ended up at the little coffee shop again.
(Lou is at the computer next to mine and all I can hear is this evil little chuckle… she is writing tomorrows entry, um which actually happened a few days ago… whatever she says about me I’m being defamed!)
We ended up at La Mamma’s. A pizza shop staffed and run by Moroccans, you gotta love that. The Pizza was great and we also had a pitcher of wine to share. I have no idea what wine it was but it tasted good , the whole point at the menu and prey thing worked rather well!
We got a nice surprise when we got back to our hotel. Not only had they promised hot water. It was!!!
