Day 4- Travels to Casablanca Casbah

The view from Salle 310-  my new, quieter room facing the sunset over the Atlantic.
I'm right at home (except it's not the Gulf of Mexico!)

Road Trip #1

OK, so in case you were wondering, here are the rules of the road in Maroc:

Stop signs=optional

Therefore, stopping at each intersection to see what the cross traffic will do is the only sane approach.

Honking at someone being sane in an intersection=mandatory

White lines painted on the road are there for you to center your car over them

Must yield to donkey carts, people and cars playing chicken with you and midgets standing on scooters (thank you, Mika and Angela).

Then there are the parking Nazis. Here are the job qualifications: Buy a day-glo colored vest and stand in the street. That’s it. For this they get paid the equivalent of 20 cents or so to stop traffic for drivers in order to get into or out of a parking space. If the drivers don't oblige, the Nazis will threaten them, although the threats are empty. Nazis are everywhere, even if there’s no traffic or lack of parking spaces. The thing about it is, why resist for 20 cents?
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Spices and Fruits/ Veggies. Can't you just smell them?

So, we drove down to the casbah in Casablanca on Sunday, the 9th and also got some great coastline shots at Mohammedia.

The casbah experience requires all of your senses, but I think the nose wins.

• Every type of food, spice, oil and more edible items than you can think of, some of them still alive.
• Leather goods, some of them VERY fine
• Brass and metallic items, yes and lots of Hookahs
• Gold and silver jewelry, artisan-crafted clothing, etc
• Rugs, fabric, electrical, electronic, plumbing, scooters
• Even several dentists

then right on down to

• Second-hand items that look like they were stolen from someone's hotel room :(

People live there in the casbah, too. It's about a square mile of tiny stalls, homes and meandering lanes. So you have the kids playing, thousands of satellite dishes on every possible surface they can be attached to, dogs and cats languishing, laundry hanging out to dry, just life in general going on in a very public arena.


OK, so here is a link to the rest of the casbah and coastline photos in Picasa. Please go look and leave me your comments on this site, either publicly or privately. I'm anxious to know what you think!!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Mary.Candace.Graham/LoRes02?authkey=Gv1sRgCNLYi4W19fKhew#