August 22, 2015

Casablanca, Morocco

I woke up around 09:00, showered, dressed, packed my bags, and checked out of the hotel. I then walked from the medina to the Marrakesh Railway Station where I bought a ticket on the next available train to Casablanca (the Casa Voyageurs Railway Station). With ticket in hand, I immediately boarded the train, found my seat, and waited until 10:53 for the 10:45 train to depart the station. The train traveled through some pretty uninteresting arid countryside and I shared a first class cabin with a mother and her children.

Casablanca Voyageurs Railway Station.
Casablanca Voyageurs Railway Station.

The train took about three and a half hours to reach Casablanca Voyageurs Railway Station and I departed the train car there. I then walked to the Ibis hotel next to the station and checked on the price of a room there; after being quoted a terribly high price, I started to leave and was then given a promotional price which was on par with most of the cheapest hotels in this city (nothing is really cheap here and there are no hostels . . . Casablanca, the city, sucks); I accepted the promotional price and was quite content with my room and the proximity to the railway station (ahhh, the power of walking away). After checking in to my room, I sought out food to ease my hunger pains and walked to the nearby Pizza Hut where I had a Pepsi and a pizza topped with beef and spicy peppers (I was still under the spell of that gastrointestinal disease I picked up in Fes and was not going to take a chance on any non-reputable/franchise establishment that doesn’t have a name and an image to protect; plus, I found the Moroccan cuisine I have tasted before to be rather unimaginative and bland, so I wasn’t interested in giving it another shot in a futile effort to prove itself). After eating, I walked to the closest Carrefour market (which wasn’t very close at all) and bought some water bottles, Coca-Cola, and iced tea. I then returned to my hotel room, showered, shaved, and relaxed. Later on, as I was laying in my bed and after having found nothing worth watching on television (isn’t that the case 99% of the time?), I watched a couple of films on Youtube; first ‘Play Dirty’ with Michael Caine, and then ‘The Defector’ with Montgomery Clift). Afterwards, I went to sleep around 03:00.

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