First day of 2010. This was the day we left Marrakech for us last day in Morocco, a morning stop in Casablanca followed by us moving forward to Rabat, the capital in Morocco. I was quite exhausted on this day. I remember because this was the day where I put on my glasses for the first time in the entire trip. Not really physically coz I called it quits at midnight the day before, but just mentally exhausted. I had pushing my limits for the past 10 days and now I had begun to feel the effects of it. Plus, I was feeling a little of a sore throat in the morning. When I appeared at the breakfast table in the morning, S. took one look at me and said, "Today you just need to be served." As spoiled as this may sound, the occasional pampering was something quite welcomed. After being independent for so long, it was nice to just sit there and wait for tea to be brought to you already mixed and all that. haha. So I guess understandably, wasn't too much of a cam whore for the first part of the day. As we drove into Casablanca, I stared around at the different districts around us, but didn't really take pictures till we stopped at the Hassan II mosque, the 3rd biggest mosque in the world, built on the sea. Something funny that happened was that I had wondered away from the group myself, just snapping pictures or watching the surf... when I returned to the bus, S. was like, "where were you? Too tired to take any pictures?" To which I defensively replied, "Got lah!" And then S. chuckled at my natural usage of Singlish, something which 3 of us had not heard in a long time, and I just stared in horror at them as I realized how warped my "proper" english was becoming... haha.......
Anyhow, back to Casablanca. Our guide put it in this way, the famous movie Casablanca has helped romaticise the city in the sense that visitors who come have such high expectations of the city, only to fall flat when they realize that Casablanca is just like any other economic powerhouse of the country, full of modern buildings. The main attraction is probably the Hassan II mosque as the pictures below will tell you.
Built on reclaimed land, almost half of the surface of the mosque lies over the Atlantic water. This was inspired by the verse of the Quran that states " the throne of God was build on water." Part of the floor in the mosque is glass so worshippers can kneel directly over the sea. It houses approx 20,000 male and 5,000 female worshippers. The mosque displays strong Moorish influence and the architecture of the building is similar to that of the Alhambra and the mosque of Cordoba in Spain. Work on the mosque was commenced on 12 July 1986, and was intended to be completed for the 60th birthday of the former Moroccan king, Hassan II, in 1989. However, the building was not inaugurated until 30 August 1993. It took 2,500 construction workers and 10,000 artists and craftsman to build the mosque.
I think I was very lucky that day to get a very nice blue sky coz looking back at my pictures, the sand stone colour of the mosque contrasted very well with the blue sky... a feature which I realize was very much in pictures of Morocco..... the colours that they chose for their buildings really provided a very nice contrast for the environment surrouding them....
Anyhow, back to Casablanca. Our guide put it in this way, the famous movie Casablanca has helped romaticise the city in the sense that visitors who come have such high expectations of the city, only to fall flat when they realize that Casablanca is just like any other economic powerhouse of the country, full of modern buildings. The main attraction is probably the Hassan II mosque as the pictures below will tell you.
Built on reclaimed land, almost half of the surface of the mosque lies over the Atlantic water. This was inspired by the verse of the Quran that states " the throne of God was build on water." Part of the floor in the mosque is glass so worshippers can kneel directly over the sea. It houses approx 20,000 male and 5,000 female worshippers. The mosque displays strong Moorish influence and the architecture of the building is similar to that of the Alhambra and the mosque of Cordoba in Spain. Work on the mosque was commenced on 12 July 1986, and was intended to be completed for the 60th birthday of the former Moroccan king, Hassan II, in 1989. However, the building was not inaugurated until 30 August 1993. It took 2,500 construction workers and 10,000 artists and craftsman to build the mosque.
I think I was very lucky that day to get a very nice blue sky coz looking back at my pictures, the sand stone colour of the mosque contrasted very well with the blue sky... a feature which I realize was very much in pictures of Morocco..... the colours that they chose for their buildings really provided a very nice contrast for the environment surrouding them....
