Our first stop on the tour today was to take a picture of Rick’s cafe. The cafe was opened on March 1, 2004 by an American woman who was working at the consulate. It was designed to recreate the bar made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the 1942 movie classic Casablanca.

Our next stop was the Hassan II Mosque. It is very large, beautiful and ornate. Inside it can hold 20,000 men and 5,000 women (I guess they cannot pray together as the women’s area was up one level) and outside can hold another 80,000 people. It was built from 1986 – 1993 and is 2/3 over the Atlantic Ocean. I believe our guide said there were over 10,000 craftsmen and artists that worked on it and the cost to build was over $800 million. The king originally planned to pay to build the mosque, however, the large cost made it impossible. Instead they took donations. Both Moroccans and other countries contributed. The mosque was designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau who had lived in Morocco. All of the materials used in the construction, were extracted from Morocco, with the exception of some Italian white granite columns and the glass chandeliers which came from Italy. There is a retractable roof, although it is not used very often and the mosque’s minaret is the tallest religious structure in the world. It is the only mosque in Morocco where non Muslims can enter.

As there is not much else for tourists to do in Casablanca, we headed out to Fes which is about a 4 hour drive. The terrain is very similar to California with its rolling hills and agriculture. On the way to Fez we stopped in Meknes (one of four imperial cities in Morocco) for lunch. One of the guys in our group ordered the chicken. When he got it, the chicken was cut up with the sauce poured on top, however, for all of the women who ordered the chicken, we had to cut our own chicken and pour our own sauce. Interesting.

After lunch we drove into the old city to see a market. Meknes is an agricultural city. Besides wheat, they grow grapes and olives. We also visited a UNESCO World heritage site – Al Machouar Stinia which was built in the 17th century by the powerful sultan Moulay Ismal to rival, Louis XIV of France. Very impressive. Then it was back in the bus for our drive to Fez.