Hassan II Mosque 

The Mosque is enormous with room for 25,000 inside and another 80,000 outside, making it the largest mosque outside Saudi Arabia. Other than during Ramadan, only a few hundred people worship in it though. It is a bit of a Tardis as it looks smaller from the outside than when inside, probably because of the 210m minaret. There is a lift inside the Minaret, so the muezzin can get to the top to make the call to prayer. The roof can be opened in hot weather, or when the mosque is crowded, as although there is electric heating under the marble floors, there is no air con.

Not easy getting a clear photo inside, as the Italian chandeliers provide so much light! Virtually every other part of the mosque was made from sources in Morocco. There are aisles either side of this main area; everyone can hear as there are many cunningly concealed loud speakers.

This is one of very few mosques that has guided tours for non-muslims – they need the money to pay the 200+ people who keep the place clean and guarded.

Whilst waiting for the sun, I have been exploring the rest of this very large port city. It is growing very rapidly and much of it is a building site. Small old buildings are levelled, and very modern ones being built. They are building a very futuristic new Financial Centre about 3 miles out of the centre on what looks to have been farm land until recently. Very posh tower blocks of apartments, brand new schools, sports facilities and car parks. And right on a tram line. Don’t seem to be any shops at all though.

There are now 2 tram lines and 2 more planned (for 2021 & 2022), so it is easy to get around much of the city, they run every 10 minutes or so throughout the day and are very very cheap. However I seem to be the only tourist on the trams, probably because to use them much you really need a 7 day pass (£6.50), and there are only 4 places where they can be obtained, none of them near where tourists are likely to be. In any case most tourists don’t stay here as long as a week. You can ‘pay as you go’ at a machine at any stop but you either need a Moroccan issued credit card or an extreme amount of small change.

The centre is much like any modern city (except for the potholes in the pavements – this would be a very bad place to be disabled), but once you travel further out, there is a lot of variation. Not surprisingly the area near the tram stop called ‘Former abattoir’ is not very salubrious, whilst that near ‘Hermitage’ is very up market. What is of note is the number of cafes and small shops along every street. There are no really large shops, and not many medium size ones. Most of the cafes are pretty scruffy and only used by men. Shops of like type also cluster together, so you can get 200m of kitchenware shops, followed by 150m of haberdashers. You need local knowledge to find anything other than every day essentials.

On Friday I went to the end of the T2 tramway, and then walked a couple of miles along the Corniche to ‘Morocco Mall’. This is billed as the 2nd largest in Africa, but it is actually more like a very large airport duty free than one of our shopping malls. It is much smaller than the Trafford Centre or the Metro Centre. There is almost airport standard security on the doors (and I doubt that ‘undesirables’ get in), it is all duty free, and all very up market shops. The main attraction is the aquarium.

Yes, that is a scuba diver cleaning the glass on the inside.

Visited the Musee Abderrahman Slaoui yesterday. It was the home of a very wealthy Moroccan collector, and has some interesting Moroccan and European items, particularly lots of ‘Kitsch’ in its original German art meaning – which may mean something to some of you, but not much to me. Kept me out of the rain for about an hour though. The Moroccan jewellery was very interesting – the women must have had strong necks and ears to bear the weight of it though.

It has rained heavily for a short time most afternoons so far. I cause much interest by producing waterproof trousers from my rucksack! There are very few drains in the streets or the Medina, so it only has to rain for 5 minutes for everywhere to be awash. It is then difficult to cross the roads as cars are parked everywhere and they rarely leave more than 2 or 3 inches between 2 cars, so you have to find an actual crossing point, and that may be underwater. I can’t work out how they ‘unpark’ cars that are so close together. 

Generally it is very safe to cross roads as pedestrians seem to have right of way in virtually all circumstances. You just raise your right hand, look at the driver and go. They always stop. The penalties for hitting a pedestrian must be draconian, as they have no patience with other drivers, and are always sounding their horns. There are a few places with pedestrian traffic signals on very busy roads, but unfortunately these are not always in sync with the traffic lights, so it can get a little exciting.

Very occasionally you see horse or donkey drawn vehicles still. This one was on quite a fast road.

When I first visited Morocco over 30 years ago, about 30% of the traffic was non motorised. Since then the country has made great progress. There are still beggars, but no more than in Liverpool; they are mostly elderly or disabled, and I doubt they are homeless. Family size must have reduced as there are not nearly as many children about.

It is as though there were 2 countries mixed together in some ways, as there are many people who obviously have a lifestyle similar to Western Europe, but also still many working in small workshops that overflow into the street, and it is difficult to see how what they are doing adds enough value to live on. There must be a lot of underemployment as well. I am in an AirBnB 1 room flat in a block of 9. The block employs a full time doorman (who spends most of his day on a hard wooden chair outside, chatting to his friends). I don’t see how he can be paid more than a pittance, or that there is any real need for him.