Rita and I Tour Casablanca

Morocco's biggest port did not resemble whatever concept or image we had in our minds, but it was still interesting.

We took the included city tour together — Rita’s first time off the ship in 12 days, and we both did fine. We felt that our guide rambled more than he should have, leading us at times to point out something we were passing and ask him about it. We still had an enjoyable and informative experience — and we bought a silk runner for our hallway back in Golden. By the way, “Casa blanca” means “white house.” When told this, I was surprised I hadn’t thought of that myself, since I certainly know those words from Spanish, although maybe the Portuguese gave it that name. I don’t know that language, but I know there is some similarity with certain words.

We passed a re-creation of Rick’s Cafe from the movie Casablanca - the original was on a Hollywood soundstage. This evening, while cruising toward Tangier, I watched the movie in the Star Theater with a hundred other guests. If I saw it before, it was a distant memory. Rita didn’t feel the need to watch it.

Our first stop on the 4-hour bus tour was Morocco’s biggest mosque. The tower is “60 stories tall,” which I take to mean about 600 feet.

Here’s a closeup of the tile work near the top:

And here’s a 180-degree panorama picture of the grounds that I created on my iPhone. We weren’t allowed beyond the barricade near the street:

From there we went to the city’s largest Roman Catholic church, which had some of the most amazing and extensive stained glass I have seen in any church. We were told the glass came from Chartres, France. Looking at it up close, these are not stained glass panels of the kind I’m used to seeing. Each piece seems to be some translucent rock. I would have liked to ask someone about it.

Outside on the church grounds was a second “church,” a grotto only deep enough for the altar. There was, however, a place to light candles which were for sale.

(That’s Rita on the left.)

There’s more to share about the excursion, but it’s getting late (1:00 am) and I have an 8:15 excursion in Tangier. We did attend Col. David King’s third lecture, this time focused on intelligence activity linked to amphibious landings. Normandy will be a separate lecture next Tuesday when we’re in France. Lots of interesting stories I wish I could do justice to. One quick story, though: To make the Germans believe British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was not where he really was (about to engage with Rommel?), they had a body double of him reviewing the troops at Gibraltar and made sure the picture was published. It worked.

I’ll leave with tonight’s excellent sunset after we departed Casablanca.

Bye for now.