Arrived at Casablanca the airport 1 pm local time – our first adventure was the passport check which went smoothly although the wait was maybe 20 minutes.

We then had to find our bags and should have paid more attention to the announcement on the plane as our collection point was not easily findable. Our bags had been taken from the travelator and were waiting for us.

Next challenge was to find a Maroc simcard. There were three simcard sellers at the bottom of the stairs from customs and ignored Orange and the other based on our research. For 10 euro cash we each picked up a 10 GB data plan and the Sims were installed and set up for us by a very efficient team.

We then phoned our driver who was waiting outside for us and met him him a bit after 2 pm local time in very warm sunshine.

He seemed very nice and he took us to our hotel in Morocco which was a 30 minute trip. Our original plan was to visit the main mosque on the water front but we’re not going to make the last 3 pm tour, so instead we were dropped at our Hotel Mirriber? which is very close to the mosque.

We spent the afternoon getting some local cash from the yeller machine in the bank next to the hotel and were slugged a $5 fee.

We then walked to the mosque and south along the waterfront before winding our way to a Macdonald’s for dinner.

We certainly weren’t staying at the ritzy end of town and none of the cafes looked welcoming as they all have men sitting out the front with very few women around. We had no inclination to enter any of the cafes that only had men sitting out front, smoking and drinking tea and coffee.

On our way back to the hotel after dinner, my daughter’s phone was stolen from her hands by a motorcycle pillion passenger.

This was very distressing for her and we spent the remainder of the evening cancelling bank accounts and so on.
If you are staying near the mosque in hindsight I would recommend walking north along the harbour rather than south as we did to get some better insights of the town. We had no real time to explore this city though.
8,153 steps

Next morning after a nice breakfast in our hotel we were collected for a tour of the mosque.
This was stunning and one of the more memorable places we have ever visited. It is a beautiful building and vast in it’s scale.
Not to be missed

It pays to have some change with you though.

The bathroom attendant was very please to receive a 100 Dirham note (around  $7AUD) for handing me some toilet paper squares to wipe my hands after washing.