And now for the Honeymoon 🙂

After the wedding, and in good order, we got ourselves to the airport on time for an epic journey. We flew through Iceland to London, switching planes to Lisbon, and then on to Morocco.

Well, that was the idea anyway. We ourselves did manage to do that, our luggage will get its own story as we recount their surprising extracurricular activities as one bag slow rolled itself behind us by about 5 days before getting lost in the Casablanca airport, while the other made it all the way to Washington D.C. before being reunited with us in Lisbon almost 2 weeks later. (whee!)

Our first stop (without most of our luggage) was Casablanca. Oddly, despite being nearly 3000 miles apart reminded me somewhat of Cairo, Egypt. My memory is likely a bit fuzzy though, I was last in Cairo 40 years ago. I was surprised to see the heavy Art Deco nature of chunks of downtown.

This was a bit of a whirlwind tour though, so we didn’t really get to immerse in the city. We had arranged with the tour package company (Black Tomato (which I will recommend very highly, pricey, but they really do take care of you)) ahead of time for walking tours with different guides in the various locations around Morocco we were going to see, and our first tour started with the Grande Mosquée Hassan II. right on the waterfront. It’s scale is really hard to grasp, because it sits isolated in the middle of an enormous plaza, and because behind it is the Atlantic, there is absolutely nothing to compete with it in your field of view.

That tower is 210 meters or roughly 700 feet (~60 Stories) tall. For the Seattlites among you, that puts it slightly taller than the space needle. for the Rhode Islanders, it’s about 300 feet taller than One Financial Plaza (neé the Hospital Trust building) and for the Bostonians, it’s about 10m shorter than the Prudential Building.

Suffice to say it’s a lot farther away than it looks in that picture… and bigger than it looks in this one.

The interior of the mosque is stunningly intricate. the amount of handwork that went into each part of this places is staggering.

As we wended our way around town we did see this place, but opted not to stop and look in. The real Ricks Café Americain is in Burbank. This is not why we’re here…

Later in the day we wandered into what would be the first of the many covered shop areas we would pass through.

And then another, showing off the Art Deco influence that was all over the city.

And I can recommend the hotel for the bathroom alone… (Hotel Le Doge Relais and Chateaux)

but the rooftop cafe was also delightful when we got an early breakfast before leaving on the road to Chefchaouen