Tagine

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Arrived into Casablanca pretty tired after a nine hour flight. One of the other crew Anis (thats pronounced aneice) was from Morocco so was going back to his parents house and invited me to have lunch with them. I didn’t really want to intrude but he was insistent I come. I discovered that moroccans are very hospitable and are more than happy to welcome someone in their home. We got in a taxi and made our way to his family's house. They lived in an apartment block within walking distance to the sea. The apartment was pretty small for a family of five but was beautifully furnished in typical Moroccan style. His parents were really lovely, his mum couldn’t speak any English but his dad could so I chatted with him. His mum bought us out a traditional moroccan dish…tagine! (which is now my favourite). It is made of minced meat with roasted lamb, pumpkin, carrots etc in the middle and the traditional way of eating it is with your fingers (see mum I always told you that in some places eating with your fingers is customary!) The dish was massive and there was so much food I couldn’t have finished it in a week.

After a while we went back to the hotel and then went out to a Spanish restaurant and bar. The restaurant upstairs was fully packed so went down to the bar which was the same. It was pretty busy, with people dancing everywhere to the spanish music. Went back to the hotel bar which was beautiful. It was nearly midnight and only a couple of people were in there. I was told that within the next couple of hours this place would be jammed packed with people which i found pretty hard to believe. Sure enough the girls came in, and the guys followed. Little did I realise that every single girl in there was a hooker!! Most of the guys were westerners or arabs on business trips. Most of the girls were quite young but obviously for them they could make pretty good money. Im surprised the hotel permitted this especially being a muslim country and all, but these girls would get these guys to buy a room for the night so I guess it worked out for them.

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