Casablanca, Morocco

Of all the gin shops, in all the towns in all the world, we had to come here.

The metropolis of Casablanca doesn’t quite live up to the romanticized image we get from the Humphrey Bogart film – I’m afraid the image of dozens of white, Christian, western Europeans in finely tailored western fashions sitting around a white-washed jazz club in the middle of a French-run Casablanca is about as far from reality as you can get.

But Casablanca is not without charm. A Muslim nation at the northwest tip of the African continent, Morocco may not be a financially affluent nation, but what is lacks in cash, it more than makes up for in culture and tradition. While some parts of town look like a bombed out Beirut, there is a surprising number of finely manicured gardens and a great many treasures of Arabic architecture.

We left the ship at 11:45 and headed straight for food. There seemed to be some difficulty, at first, in finding a restaurant in which women were welcome – but that may have only been our own speculation. Women in Casablanca are certainly not absent, but although you walk the streets with them, you tend to not notice them at all.

The languages of Morocco are French and Arabic, and I did have a difficult time communicating with – for example – the strolling shoe shine boy regarding a price for the shining of my shoes. Eventually I held out a few coins for him to pick through, and like an Ape of Gibraltar, the guy took every cent (I should’ve known better than that!). I found out from the man sitting next to me that in the exchange I paid twice what I should have, but $.90 isn’t much for a shoe shine, even if it is twice the going rate.

My shoes look great, by the way.