Lily is normally pretty good on road trips, but now that I sit in the backseat with her when we are all together she is a little stinker! She slept for the first hour and half of our trip but then woke up and the only thing that would keep her happy was cheerios. For the last 2 hours of the drive I had to hand her cheerios one by one. The same thing happened on the drive back to Agadir the next day.
We got to Casablanca around 5 pm so we hit rush hour traffic. Moroccan drivers are so crazy. Lanes, stoplights, pedestrians, mean nothing to them. To top it all off, there aren't posted street signs with street names and no one uses addresses so finding where you are going is really hard even when you are using GPS.
An hour later, we made it to the hotel. Another fun fact about Moroccans is that they LOVE babies. In the 10 minutes we were waiting in the lobby for Danny to check us in, Lily got kisses from 2 people, held by the concierge guys and got 4 chocolate chip muffins and 2 strawberries from the guy who was giving Moroccan tea and muffins to guests in the lobby.
We had dinner at the hotel because I did not want to get back in the car and deal with the craziness anymore (by craziness, I mean Lily and the other cars on the road). After dinner, Lily did a little dancing in the lobby.
The next morning Danny and Ahmed went to the consulate while Lily and I slept in and then went downstairs to have breakfast. Again, Lily got kisses and held by the ladies who were working that morning.
Danny and Ahmed got back to the hotel to pick us up around 9:30 and we headed out to do a little exploring before driving back to Agadir.
The first place we went was the Hassan II Mosque. This is the 3rd largest mosque in the world and the only one in Morocco that allows non Muslims to come inside. This place was so amazing! It took 6 years to build and everything was locally sourced. All the marble, granite, wood, metal, plaster came from Morocco and was hand carved by Moroccan artisans. The mosque can hold 25,000 people at one time and it has a retractable roof. Everything inside was just gorgeous!
After the mosque, we headed to the mall. It claims to be the largest mall in Africa and I love a good mall. It was actually really nice. It reminded me a lot of the Galleria or Northpark. Super fancy stores like Gucci and Prada but also normal stuff like Zara, Gap, etc. We didn't need anything so all I ended up buying were two pairs of shorts at Gap, a bib and spoons for Lily and some french macaroons.
Ater a quick lunch in the food court, we headed back to Agadir. It was a short trip and tough being in the car so long with Lily, but I am glad we got to check out Casablanca. It probably isn't a place I would want to go back to, but it was fun for a day!
Happy to hear there is no shortage of baby love there!
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