When my husband and I tell our friends that we visited Casablanca during our recent trip to Morocco, the first question they ask is if we went to Rick’s, the bar where much of the action took place in the iconic “Casablanca” movie. It was one of our first questions, too, but our guide, Seddik Aassim, answered a bit evasively that the classic Ingrid Bergman-Humphrey Bogart film was made completely in Hollywood, so no one actually went to Rick’s. And in the very real city of Casablanca no such place existed.
It turns out there is such a bar and restaurant there now, but it’s the brainchild of Kathy Kriger, a former diplomat and commercial attache who figured out how to give travelers who asked about the spot what they wanted. She completely restored a traditional riad (a home built around an open courtyard) and established her restaurant there in 2004. The bar and dining room look exactly like the ones in the movie, and house musicians report that “As Time Goes By” is one of the most frequently requested songs they play.
Aassim rightly pointed out that there is so much more to see in Morocco’s largest city of 3.7 million people than a re-creation of a bar that wasn’t even real to begin with. Situated on the country’s Atlantic coast and with one of the largest artificial ports in the world, Casablanca is a major player in global financial markets and home to such major museums as the Villa of Arts and the Museum of Moroccan Judaism.
We had only one day to explore before our plane back to the United States the next morning, however, so the designers of our tour decided to concentrate on two exceptional places of worship. Our first stop was Notre Dame de Lourdes, a modernist Catholic church built in 1954 by architect Achille D'angleterre and engineer Gaston Zimmer. From the outside it could be any other church, but its inside is spectacular, thanks to windows designed by Gabriel Loire. The artist used 8,711 square feet of colorful stained glass around the entire building to interpret some of the best-known tales from the Bible. Colored glass on the second level is diffused through angled panels to cast a softly hued glow.
The church was built to accommodate Catholics who came to Morocco during the French occupation from 1912 to 1956. Outside is a replica of the grotto at Lourdes where visitors can light candles for their loved ones.
Not far away is the palatial Grand Mosque of Hassan II, one of the largest in the world and the only one in Morocco where non-Muslims are welcome to come inside. Situated in a stunning spot on the Atlantic shore, the mosque’s capacity is 105,000 people. Its prayer hall is three times the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and its minaret the second tallest in the world at 656 feet tall.
The building is outfitted with polished marble floors, Venetian chandeliers, Moorish arches and 70 cedar-paneled cupolas -- all installed by Moroccan artisans. On a level beneath the prayer hall is an ablution room where worshippers kneel at lotus-shaped marble fountains to perform the purification ritual of washing their faces, arms, legs and feet before beginning to pray.
Of course, it is always the people one meets on a trip who provide the most endearing of memories. When we returned to our hotel from the mosque I had just over an hour before I had to turn up at a special farewell dinner. I had been looking for a specific gift for a friend that I hadn’t yet found, and I calculated that it might be for sale at a nearby marketplace.
When the proprietor of the first shop where I stopped began his sales pitch, I cut him off, saying that I was only looking for one thing and only had an hour to find it. His response was to find someone to watch his store while he guided me to stalls where he thought I could find the present. Thanks to his maneuvering me along and explaining what I needed in Arabic, we found the item in a shopkeeper’s attic. Then my new friend held my hand to get me across the street and would only take a small tip instead of the larger one I offered to him.
He did all of this in record time, too, returning me to the hotel with enough time left to take a shower and change into my party clothes. Then my husband and I joined our group for the ride to our farewell dinner. Imagine our surprise and delight when the van stopped at Rick’s.
When we travel to places where we don’t know the language, we prefer to join a group, often Smithsonian Journeys because of their emphasis on learning. Other advantages are advance tickets to busy venues, guides who expertly shepherd us through places with which we are not familiar and adventures such as our dinner at Rick’s: www.smithsonianjourneys.org.
