Visiting Casablanca was on my bucket list & was the reason I took this cruise, today I arrived at Casablanca & did a coach & walking tour around the city.
Casablanca, Morocco.
Unfortunately, the coach tour I booked was not very good. We saw very little of Casablanca, spent far too long at the Mosque & even parked up for an hour so people could shop. The woman who was the guide for our tour was terrible, she liked the sound of her own voice far too much & did like to describe in great detail how one should cleanse yourself before praying in the mosque. At one point she started screaming at a woman in the Mosque, who was listening to her but wasn't on her tour. She had 39 people on the coach, eight of whom were French, she spoke in French 90% of the time, cracking jokes with the few French people on the tour, whilst ignoring the majority of English people.
When we got off the coach at the Mosque she left me & Jean to fend for ourselves & at no stage checked to see if anyone was lagging behind. Myself & another man, were able to help Jean walk around the Mosque, which was very nice but out of the 5-hour tour we spent 2½ hours at the Mosque. This was far too long & the time could have been spent looking around Casablanca, the closest we got to Riks Cafe was as we passed by it in the coach. After yesterday's tour in Tangier, this was terrible & not worth the money spent on it. The guide did not receive a tip when the tour finished a half hour early.
My limited view of Casablanca after the tour made me disappointed in it. It is a fairly modern city, it's not clean like Tangier was & the market that we did visit very briefly was covered in fish guts and rubbish, unlike the very clean market we visited yesterday. I was quite happy to buy & eat food from the Tangier market but I wouldn't have eaten anything from the market here in Casablanca.
When we were dropped back at the port there is quite a long walk back to the ship. A man did eventually help Jean by pushing her back to the ship in a wheelchair whilst I walked alongside but when we got to the ship she still had to climb up the very steep & narrow gangplank back to the ship. I can't believe that there is no way to get disabled people in wheelchairs or those with walking difficulties back on board the ship without having to walk up the steep gangplank. Even if they had a walkway that doubled back on itself like some other ports it would have made it easier.
I was glad I went to Casablanca but I won't go out of my way to visit it again. Morocco seems like a beautiful country & the people are very nice but Casablanca is not a good example of Morocco. Tangier was a much nicer & more interesting place to visit, it felt safer, was cleaner & there was some real history to see there.