Day 8 & 9 - Sea day & Casablanca

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Day 8 & 9

8 is a sea day sailing from Barcelona to Casablanca. Booked a massage (Elke’s was good). Went for a hot tub. Only crazy Canadians will go into a hot tub in cool weather with a gale force wind blowing. Played scrabble and went for dinner to the buffet restaurant (we had never done that). Elke had Cioppino which wasn’t quite as good as the Pelican Club in New Orleans.

9 we are up early for a tour of Casablanca and the capitol Rabbat. The tour guide spoke to us only in Arabic for a good 10 minutes until some people started asking for English. Nuri the guide answered in English that this was the Arabic tour. Best part of the tour.

Bus headed for the King’s Palace. I have very little internet access right now so I don’t have many details. Palace grounds sit on 85 hectares (???) including palace, Mosque, schools and government offices.

We loaded back into the bus and headed for a mosque built in 1284 on the grounds of roman ruins. A very undisturbed historical place. No signs, no descriptions and no map or directions. Very little info from the tour guide except for things involved with Islam. One thing we did notice was the storks nesting everywhere.

Back on the bus and off for an authentic lunch. It was great and in a Moroccan restaurant.

Ona disturbing thing was our visit to a Berber Carpet outlet where we unknowingly had to sit thru a carpet presentation. Kind of like getting blindsided with a time share presentation. Really didn’t appreciate that too much nor did a lot of the other passengers.

Next we visited a Kasbah and the Andalusian Gardens. Not quite the right time of year. LOTS of cats and no dogs – some law about keeping dogs inside the house.

Finally we went to visit the largest Mosque in Casablanca. Vary ornate and very expensive to build. It will allow over 100,000 to pray at the same time.

By this time (because of the carpet debacle) we were late for the ship – we were supposed to be on-board by 5:30 and it was after 6:00.

Dinner at a nice steakhouse and another sea day tomorrow when we head for Las Palmas.

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