[Worldtrippers home] [2025 Crystal-Viking]
For last year’s report on Casablanca, click here.
Before we left Agadir two days ago on April 24, 170 guests disembarked for a multi-day land tour to Marrakesh. In addition, a new enrichment lecturer boarded: Craig Connors and his wife Liz. We have known Craig for more than 40 years – the two of us used to rent a house with him, and he was the best man at our wedding.
This is the first time we have sailed with Craig since he began lecturing. Yesterday we had the rare situation where Russell and Craig gave back-to-back lectures.
Last night we began an overnight in Casablanca, but we didn’t arrive until the evening. (Craig’s first lecture was about Casablanca, and was followed by a showing of the movie in the Star Theatre.)
This morning, Craig organized a private car to take us around Morocco. We began in Casablanca itself with a visit to the Hassan II Mosque, the second largest mosque in Africa. It was built in only six years between 1986-1993. The minaret stands almost 690 feet high and is the second tallest in the world.
We bought tickets for a guided tour inside the mosque. The entire site is huge. The interior can accommodate 25,000 worshippers, which the grounds can accommodate another 80,000.
The tour was informative, but long. Unfortunately, the 45-minute tour ended up taking almost 1.5 hours. This is unfortunate because the rest of the day became very rushed.
We were supposed to drive to the Moroccan capital city of Rabat, a 1.5-hour drive away. Because we were running almost an hour late, we mainly had time to drive all the way there just to have lunch.
Fortunately, Younice our driver had a great restaurant recommendation. Dar Naji is a tagine restaurant, and we had a magnificent meal of various kinds of Moroccan tagine. (“Tagine” refers both to a clay earthenware pot and the dish that is cooked inside. The tagine dish is a stew made up of various meats and vegetables in a savory sauce.) We left the restaurant completely stuffed.
Due to time constraints, we barely had time to see anything else in Rabat. Younice rushed us to the Hassan Tower, the minaret of an incomplete mosque. It was intended to be the world’s largest minaret, but construction stopped in 1199 when the caliph al-Mansur died.
The incomplete minaret is surrounded by 348 columns, which are also unfinished. Finally the site features the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, which contains the tombs of the Moroccan king as well as his two sons.
We barely had time to snap some photos before we had to jump back into the car for the 1.5-hour drive back to Casablanca. The all-aboard was 5:30 pm, and we got back to the ship at 5:15 pm. We returned just as the 170 guests from Marrakesh also returned.
It turned out to be a good thing we had not taken a Viking included tour as originally scheduled. Due to a problem with port security, many Viking buses were delayed three to four hours. We ended up having a full day out, just not the day we had expected.
