We got back to a heatwave and no phone or internet. In March we'd paid for another 6 months internet in the morning before we left and the line had gone down that afternoon. It took a few requests in person at Maroc Telecom but when we finally got an engineer he said the fault was external , went away, and returned no more than 10 minutes later with the line restored. We suspect paying our bill led the exchange to disconnect us.
Anyway we are fixed now and have set off on a trip up to Tangier complete with dongle. We have not been there for 25 years on a trip with sweetheart and both grannies and thought we'd see how it had changed. We were intending to go later but saw a weather forecast for torrential rain whilst we'd be there and brought the trip forward to miss it. The weather is much pleasanter in the North, mid 20s. It had been 40C in Taroudant, unseasonally hot and much too hot coming from autumnal Wales.
We are currently in Larache, a pleasant resort south of Tangier. In colonial times this northern part of Morocco was under Spanish not French control so everyone speaks spanish and little french and the architecture reflects spanish art deco/ mission design.
There are some nice gardens/promenade over the cliffs
and towards the olld Portugese 17C fort,
a pretty fishing harbour, and some nicely restored buildings around La Place de Liberation, universally referred to as "Plaza Espanol".
Add in some really good fish restaurants and what's not to like?
The medersa in Sale is small but an absolute treat. It was built by Sultan Aboul Hassan in 1333. The ground floor which is beautifully decorated with Q'ranic inscriptions
was used not only for teaching and prayer but as a court and the (windowless) cells above for the students to live in.
It is next to the Grand Mosque and therefore at the high point of the Sale outcrop.
Casablanca didn't really exist until the Protectorate. There was a little fishing port there and Morocco's main port was Tangier. The French developed it as an Atlantic port away from the Spanish enclaves. They did this just in the 20s and 30s so it was just the right time for the beginnings of Art Deco. Avenue Mohammed V is a pedestrianised street lined with low-rise buildings in both classic art deco and the earlier local style known as Mauriesque. New York/Chicago it's not, more Miami beach or Napier; not a special trip destination but a very pleasant amble down Mohammed V and round the nearby streets. Unlike Miami Beach and Napier few of the buildings are restored and one has to go round with your head back as ground level has often had modern shopfronts put in whilst the upper floors are pretty pristine.
We took a day trip by train to Casablanca from Rabat. The big attraction is the Hassan II Mosque. It was built in 6 years by craftsmen working a 24 hour shift system and is the biggest in Africa. It can accomodate 20,000 men for prayers and 5,000 women in the gallery.
The cost is thought to be in excess of £800 million. It is said that a third of this was from the old king's own money but then he was a ruling monarch so it's not really clear which was his money and the state's. The rest was raised by "voluntary" contributions from ordinary people all over Morocco although our friend says that there was a good injection of Saudi money as well.
The site is spectacular jutting into the sea and the scale overwhelming. To me it is very bling and rather like a modern 5star hotel. Inside it does not have the rhythm I have come to expect from mosques because they did not want to install air-conditioning which would have been noisy and so they have an opening roof to allow for ventilation. This means that the central area is free of pillars and the feeling is more of a basilica.
They have 200 people permanently employed cleaning it and to pay for them they open it up to non-muslims for 3 tours a day, the only mosque other than the ruined Tin Mal a non-muslim can visit in Morocco.
Postscript
You may recall that after the Koranic Schools post I had Linux visitors from USA, UK, and Morocco.After this post I've have Linux visitors again but from Russia.
