August 19 – We took 6-hour train ride from Tanger to Casablanca. We stayed in a nice Hotel Suite, in the same Hotel (Downtown Hotel) that we had stayed in 4 months earlier in April. That evening as we went strolling around Casablanca en route to a restaurant, we had a mishap.
While crossing the street at a light, there was a major hole in the street (ca. 10 cm in width) which we did not see. Jonny stepped into the hole with one foot and fell down hard on the street, injuring his shin bone and the skin around the shinbone area as well as his big toe. His leg bled profusely for a while. When we got to our restaurant, Jonny washed out his wound with water and a kind young man at the restaurant gave him some rubbing alcohol as a disinfectant to clean out the wound.
He was in a lot of pain and had a significant limp in his gait when we walked back to the hotel. Jonny had brought a first-aid kit along which he used to further wash, clean out, and bandage up the wound. We spent much of the evening talking and watching the news on TV (BBC and Al-Jazeera) and were impressed with how much better quality the news reporting was on both the BBC and Al-Jazeera!
Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca (© Mervin Smucker)
That evening we took a petit taxi to the Hassan II Mosque and were quite taken in by grandness of the Mosque and the surrounding plaza. It was completetd in 1993 and it is the largest mosque in Morocco. The minaret is the world’s tallest at 210 metres.
Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca (© Mervin Smucker)
Mervin Smucker Travels 