"Plaga de Agadir" and "Taghazout Bay" were our chants. We liked the way the words rolled off our tongues.
Agadir was our port of call with the special Windstar evening event. We spent the afternoon at an Internet cafe after a brief walk in town, just enough to get a a few Moroccan dirham, so we could relax with Moroccan tea: minty and sweet and poured with a long draw as though one was making stitches with a long thread. It was a beautiful bay and the sea side was active with McDonalds and various open air cafes. Cee switched from Spanish to Arabic with relative ease and our waiter, who presented her with a rose, was overcome as he requested and received her email address: Catarina.purcell@hotmail.com. He gushed that with her floppy sun hat she looked just like Julia Roberts to him.
The special event from the ship was held at sunset, ocean front at Taghazout Bay. We had a red-carpet welcome and Moroccan musicians played as we found ourselves on a carpeted beach. Belly dancers and the musicians entertained us until the sun went down and we feasted on couscous, roasted vegetables, and chicken tagine (chicken cooked in a terra cotta "hat", slowly over coals), an of course, Moroccan mint tea. It was delicious!
Casablanca was most noteworthy for our tour of Morocco's largest mosque, Hassan II, also the 13th largest in the world. Its minaret is the worlds tallest at 689 feet. Lasers focus on the minaret at night, pointing the way to Mecca. Building of the mosque began in 1986 on reclaimed seaside land and it was finally finished 7 years later. Obviously Morocco was able to get things accomplished must faster than Spain, where this would likely have taken several hundred years. All of the materials used, except for a few things such as chandeliers from Venice, are Moroccan. Over 6,000 Moroccan master craftsmen were employed to work on the project. To say that the tile work was stunning, is to minimize the enormity of it. Uniquely, a portion of the roof is automated to slide back and a portion of the floor over the ocean is glass so that worshippers can contemplate God's sky and sea during worship.
During our time in Morocco Cee was able to refresh and expand her knowledge of Arabic, a delight to her companions and certainly also for our guides.
Agadir was our port of call with the special Windstar evening event. We spent the afternoon at an Internet cafe after a brief walk in town, just enough to get a a few Moroccan dirham, so we could relax with Moroccan tea: minty and sweet and poured with a long draw as though one was making stitches with a long thread. It was a beautiful bay and the sea side was active with McDonalds and various open air cafes. Cee switched from Spanish to Arabic with relative ease and our waiter, who presented her with a rose, was overcome as he requested and received her email address: Catarina.purcell@hotmail.com. He gushed that with her floppy sun hat she looked just like Julia Roberts to him.
The special event from the ship was held at sunset, ocean front at Taghazout Bay. We had a red-carpet welcome and Moroccan musicians played as we found ourselves on a carpeted beach. Belly dancers and the musicians entertained us until the sun went down and we feasted on couscous, roasted vegetables, and chicken tagine (chicken cooked in a terra cotta "hat", slowly over coals), an of course, Moroccan mint tea. It was delicious!
Casablanca was most noteworthy for our tour of Morocco's largest mosque, Hassan II, also the 13th largest in the world. Its minaret is the worlds tallest at 689 feet. Lasers focus on the minaret at night, pointing the way to Mecca. Building of the mosque began in 1986 on reclaimed seaside land and it was finally finished 7 years later. Obviously Morocco was able to get things accomplished must faster than Spain, where this would likely have taken several hundred years. All of the materials used, except for a few things such as chandeliers from Venice, are Moroccan. Over 6,000 Moroccan master craftsmen were employed to work on the project. To say that the tile work was stunning, is to minimize the enormity of it. Uniquely, a portion of the roof is automated to slide back and a portion of the floor over the ocean is glass so that worshippers can contemplate God's sky and sea during worship.
During our time in Morocco Cee was able to refresh and expand her knowledge of Arabic, a delight to her companions and certainly also for our guides.
No comments:
Post a Comment