We were off to our final city, Casablanca. Before we left we found out some fun information about the tortoise in our Fez riad. For 11 years the tortoise had been named Paul. Then a friend of the owner brought over another tortoise and after it had been around for a bit they found Paul laying eggs, and so they changed her name to Paula. Oh, love. The trip to Casablanca was fine. It was another slow speed train, and we were a little mortified to discover that instead of individual seats we were in a compartment with four other people. The other people were lovely, but the mortifying part is there was no place for our large suitcases except bumping up against the knees of our fellow passengers, which to their credit were extremely nice about it (they took it all in due course). The final leg of our ride to the hotel was a taxi ride, made unfortunately exciting by our bags flying out the bag of the car as we headed down the highway. The taxi driver stopped and we recovered our bags with all their contents unharmed, though not without damage to our calm demeanors. Settled into our hotel (the Hôtel Central, which I’ll charitably say looks good for being over 100 years old), we got some dinner and settled in for the night.

The big tourist attraction in Fez is the Hassan II Mosque. And I will say it is big. This is very much its defining trait. Quoting from Wikipedia, it is the second largest functioning mosque in Africa, with a capacity of 105,000 worshippers and a minaret 60 stories high. We decided to walk to it from the hotel, because we thought we were relatively close, but we were not, it was in fact kind of far away but because it is so big it looked closer. We got a little lost trying to find the entrance, which turns out is via the museum, but once we got there someone there very kindly gave us a ride in a golf cart so we could make our designated tour time.

I enjoyed the mosque. Going in I thought it was going to be an interesting comparison to the Mezquita in Cordoba but man. I mean, it is. They are both mosques. There is a mosque style. Open floor plan, etc. But this thing was just on another level. The columns are gigantic. It has to be one of if not the largest room I have ever been in. Enormous. Colossal. Truly monumental. It is a beautiful structure. I had expected it to be rather plain, like many of the more modern cathedrals I have been in. But the mosque delivers, no expense spared. The walls and ceiling are covered in mosaics and patterns and the stalactite-mimicking ceiling in the corners. One aspect I particularly liked is that the mosque is built on landfill due to a Koran verse and the western “doors” open up into a sea view. The sea off Casablanca and the mosque was so powerful. The entire time we were there it has been nothing but heavy Atlantic rollers crashing into the reef. They come straight it off the ocean and curl over the shallows to bash themselves into the seawalls. Adjacent the mosque, the sea becomes part of the majesty of the hall.

One question that the tour guide got asked over and over is how long it took to build the mosque. When I was viewing some of the other large cathedrals and mosques that took centuries or more to put up (like the Mezquita), it made sense. It seems like you would just need that much time to stack so much stone and plaster atop other stone and plaster. But this sucker got put up in six years! With no detail lacking for the compressed timeline! We had learned over and over on this honeymoon that there are so many mosaic motifs that the mosaicists will use and when they put up this mosque it seems like they made sure to use every single one. My super amazing wife also pointed out in the more ancient mosques there is a more limited color palette but in this mosque they really expanded their repertoire given modern-day color technology. This included more pinks and purples and different hues of green.

After the main area we went down to the ablution area with the sturdy and delicate fountains that I would have liked to see in action. And after that we filed out of the titanium doors and the tour was done, but for us walking farther and farther away to finally be able to get the whole thing in frame. Before our visit I was pretty whatever about it actually but afterwards I was glad I went. My super amazing wife didn’t feel the weight of history in the Hassan II Mosque, especially as compared to the ancient sites we had seen, but I felt the weight of sheer weight in the thing. “It belongs to God,” the guide said, and it looks it.

But onto our final event. No trip to Casablanca would be complete without a trip to Rick’s Café. We went there for our final dinner of the trip. Lemme tell ya it was really great! The place doesn’t look anything like Rick’s Café from the movie in terms of layout but on the other hand they got the ambiance just right and it is in fact a really nice restaurant, and not too expensive to boot. We split some oysters and my super amazing wife got the seafood linguine and I got the duck confit and man that was to die for. Melt in your mouth. The waiters wore waistcoats and fezzes and the service was prompt. The piano player showed up as we were having dessert. He started of course with “As Time Goes By.”

And that, dear reader, was the last thing we did on our honeymoon and the last thing we did in Morocco. After dinner we packed our bags and went to the airport to take an overnight flight back on home. It was a beautiful country and we can’t wait to go back, hopefully when we are filthy rich so I can buy all the mosaic tables I could want.