Today we arrived at our last foreign port, of Casablanca, Morocco! All of our passports had to be stamped before immigration cleared the boat, so it took a long time, and we weren't cleared until after 11am (when it's usually no later than 10). Since it took so long, my friends and I decided to stay on the boat and eat lunch at 11:30 before leaving the ship.
After we ate our lunch, we set out to experience Morocco! The port is really big and it's a far walk from where the boat is, so there are shuttle buses that take us from the boat to the gate which is nice! The first thing we did was walk to the big Mosque, which we heard a lot of good things about. The walk there was kind of long and very dirty and dusty. The sidewalks were covered with dirt, so the bottoms of my white pants are now brown!! haha. When we finally got to the mosque, we realized how increadible huge it was! Honestly, words can't describe how big this place was, and it was gorgeous. We wanted to go in and look around because we heard the inside was just as pretty as the outside, but visits inside weren't until 3 and it was only 1, so we didnt want to wait. The only people allowed in at the time were male worshippers, which we clearly weren't. It was alright though, because we got to peak inside a little from the open doors.
After the mosque we walked back toward the port, and to the Bazaar they have that is really close to our boat. The Bazaar was huge and filled with some really cool stuff. Morocco is a very colorful country, so most all of their things are very colorful as well. The exchange rate for Morocco is 8 Moroccan Duhraims to $1, so we definately benefit here! The soda I bought ended up being like 35 cents or something in US currency.. it was crazy! I bought a lot today, but didn't spend much money at all, which was really nice! I got some really cool jewlery, tea cups, and other random things that I liked. We ended up spending a lot of time at the Bazaar, and we were all really tired and sore from holding our bags by about 5:30, so we headed back to the ship.
Casablanca really isn't that touristy of a town, so there isn't much to see or do, but I had a good day today, and didn't mind coming back to the ship somewhat early to catch up on some homework and relax. I am planning on going to Marrakech, Morocco, Tuesday and Wednesday, which will be nice because I have a feeling I will have done everything I wanted to do in Casablanca by the end of tomorrow.
The weather here is different. In Egypt, we would eat outside on the deck for breakfast at 8am, and the sun would be so hot already we would be sweating. But here in Morocco, this morning there was a really nice breeze during breakfast and it wasn't that sunny or hot out yet. The heat didn't really hit until about 2pm today, and it did get pretty hot. There is usually a nice breeze though, since we're on the coast of the Atlantic, which is nice. Morocco is another Islamic country, so out of respect, we are supposed to cover our knees and shoulders again.. so it makes it even hotter when you're wearing pants and a tee shirt!
Another weird thing here is that the boat and Morocco are on different times. We all thought we were supposed to gain another hour before reaching Morocco, but apparantly it's the captain's call when we change, and we didn't. So when we got off the boat this morning, all of our watches were saying it was 1:15, but the big clock by the bank was flashing that it was only 12:15... so now it's very confusing because our ship is going to be an hour ahead of Moroccan time this whole time! Ughh!
Now it's time for some more homework and then off to bed! I will write about Day 2 in Morocco sometime tomorrow!!
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