Walking in Old Town Casablanca

Day 03 - We had planned to head to Rabat today.  Rather than heading to the capital, we walked around Old Town Casablanca.  In fact, my watch says we put on more than 10.5 km.  Right off the bat, we ran into some fellow travellers.  They were in from Abu Dhabi for a week trip.  We may be going to some of the same cities  but because our itinerary slowly takes place over a month, we assuredly will not run into them again.

We walked through the Marine Mall heading to the Hassan II Mosque along the ocean waterfront.  The early clouds burnt off quickly and it was a beautiful day where temperatures may have hit around 26C.  It is delightful just walking around in the sun.

We had some chicken w/ fries and 7-Ups in a small place near our hotel.  It was about US $11. in total.

Later this evening we walked another direction in the Old Casablanca area.  We found the Mohammed V Square named after a former king.  The square has well-known water feature known as 'pigeon fountain'.  

We picked up train tickets to go have lunch on the capital city of Morocco, Rabat, tomorrow.  It's a little over an hour north of Casablanca.

Slowly Catching Up to the Time Zone

Day 02 - Jay and I went to sleep before 21:30 last night but didn't manage to get out of bed until nearly 09:00 this morning! It was a fitful sleep, but it helped us to advance to a time zone that's eight hours ahead of home. We ate a slow, excellent breakfast downstairs in the Ibis Casablanca City Center Hotel. We've stayed at Ibis chain while in Germany, Poland and even Singapore: they have never disappointed in their breakfast buffets.

      

Tram #3 is just outside, so we paid around 1.20 CAD to travel to the end of the line just to see city scenes from the a/c comfort of the nicely maintained equipment. The temperatures for the day this week reach around 23C but the sun is bright and helps make it seem warmer. Eventually, we got off at the end as it was next to a huge hypermarket called Marjane. It carried more than just food. Who doesn't need to pick up a TV along with some cheap lentils? We had to pay again to return back to the Casa Port Station and our hotel.

 

We had a rather long nap this afternoon but as it doesn't get dark until late we but we walked around seven and a half kilometers when out before dinner and on our way back after it. Still a lot is closed because this is the last day of the Eid holiday and many folks will be returning from trips home this weekend. It did feel a little more lively than yesteday. But many shops are still closed. We had tangine again at one of the few large restaurants open. We watched the people watching the people out for early evening strolls. Perhaps a quick train to Rabat tomorrow just to spend a few hours in the capital city.

 

Just like many cities around the Mediterranean,  even though Casablanca has on the Atlantic, it is been designated a 'cat city' by Jay.  That means they come to lounge around city parks and accept food and affection if offered.

Arrival in Casablanca

Day 01:  We got into Montreal fourty-five minutes late.  However, we were one-hour and fifteen minutes late leaving to Casablanca.  The sun was setting over Montreal at the time. However we got here in around seven hours!  We did have to wait for what seemed like forever, or at least one hour, for our bags to come out, but we still beat half the folks to the exit.  It took very little time to have three months entry stamped into our passports.  We plan on just using one of them.

The train station is right at the airport and we took it to the historic center.  The train wasn't really fast and it took about an hour to the Casa Port Station.  Before leaving the station, we bought our train tickets to Tangier for June 1st.  Our Ibis hotel is just across the street and it'll be home for three more nights after tonight.

As this is Eid here in Morocco, most folks are visiting home and many businesses are closed.  We ended up sleeping for much of the afternoon but just returned from dinner at a restaurant. near the hotel.

It's light late here but we walked back to the hotel room and although it's only about 8:30 pm, we are resting again.  We can catch up on sleep and we will have two complete days to see some of the city.  

Live from YUL!

We departed YVR at 9:05 this morning, embarking on the first leg of our journey to Morocco with a connecting flight through Montreal. When global aviation authorities mandated three-letter identifiers in the 1930s, Canada took the path of least bureaucratic resistance by simply slapping a "Y" onto its existing two-letter railway and telegraph codes. The prefix originally stood for "Yes," pragmatically indicating that the airstrip possessed a functioning weather reporting station. It was delightfully lazy. The YUL designation follows this exact logic, appending the national "Y" to the area's former Royal Air Force radio beacon, which historically broadcasted as "UL."

Jay and I are currently waiting in Montreal for our 19:15 direct flight to Casablanca. We anticipate touching down in north Africa at approximately 7:15 AM tomorrow local time, navigating a five-hour time jump from this coast and a total eight-hour chronological displacement from home. Our first few days will be spent resetting our internal clocks at the Ibis City Centre Hotel. Jet lag seems a bit more pronounced as one ages. Tomorrow's entry should be drafted from the comfort of our room before we officially launch into our self-created circular tour of the country.

Life is Not a Vlog

I harbour a profound and absolute loathing for YouTube travel videos. If one must endure another painfully chipper "Hello, Guys" introduction, it might just be grounds to throw the router directly out the window. The atrocious planning and abysmal production values of these quote-influencers-unquote are truly staggering. They are perpetually unprepared, entirely winging their itineraries, and offering absolutely nothing of value to learn. Instead, one is subjected to interminable, overly long broadcasts featuring aimless walking or utterly inconsequential documentation of what they happened to eat for lunch. Attempting to unearth content that is both up-to-date and of acceptable quality is a complete and utter waste of precious time.

   

My own alternative for pre-trip preparation, however, is admittedly just as absurd. As the accompanying photograph of our television displaying the classic 1942 Casablanca title card indicates, we depart for the city tomorrow, and my cinematic research is a masterclass in irrelevance. The film was shot almost entirely on California soundstages, save for the local Van Nuys airport and one brief introductory snippet, and a World War II melodrama has absolutely nothing to do with the city in 2026. Do not be surprised if my forthcoming photographs are actually in colour! This is a recurring affliction of mine. I have previously discovered that West Side Story makes for a dreadful practical guide to New York City, and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday is remarkably unhelpful before visiting the eternal city in the current century, especially if one's not a princess.

48,000 Photos and Not a Single Yellowed Corner

If one wishes to scroll through a lifetime of memories without the hassle of a slide projector, the Flickr album view is wonderfully efficient. I joined the platform back in 2005. Returning from a trip to the BC Okanagan, it became immediately apparent that emailing holiday snaps was a dreadful way to share them. Now, the archive has swollen to somewhere between 48,000 and 49,000 images.

It has been a stroke of sheer brilliance having a dedicated repository to store and share images over the last 21 years. The very first photographs, uploaded several decades ago, still sit exactly where they were left.  Others, some scanned from various parts of my life, joined them. Miraculously, these digital pixels have not yellowed one little bit. It remains an absolute privilege to be able to quickly search for nearly every image I have ever seen through a viewfinder or captured via a phone's screen.

 

The screenshot provided shows my album view, organizing the years in reverse chronological order. It starts with the most recent adventures and works backward. However, the ability to search is what makes the collection approachable.  

Observant readers will notice an empty album sitting at the very top, eagerly awaiting fresh content. This Wednesday and Thursday, Jay and I are flying through Montreal to reach Casablanca, Morocco. We will be spending exactly four weeks on an individually-created circular path, winding our way through the ancient cities, up into the Atlas Mountains, and finally back down along the Atlantic coast. Expect that image count to cross the 49,000 threshold very soon.

View my Flickr Album page.

The Great Off-The-Cuff Catastrophe

It seems we've had an untimely casualty in the travel gear department. Just yesterday, the upper-arm, all-in-one blood pressure monitor which Jay and I have come to rely on suddenly lost its will to inflate. The convenient cuff has officially given up the ghost.

We truly loved that little unit. It fit neatly into a small box and was absolutely brilliant when packing. To have it fail after just a bit more than a year and a half is definitely disappointing. Still, looking on the bright side, I suppose I should feel lucky that it didn't decide to stop functioning two days into our month in Morocco, which kicks off this Wednesday!

Today’s mission involved heading uptown to hunt down a replacement. Strangely, nobody carried a similar all-in-one unit. The only compact options available were those smaller wrist monitors, which medical professionals generally do not recommend. When one uses an upper-arm cuff, one is measuring directly at the level of the heart. With a wrist monitor, you can get significant differences in pressure depending on exactly where your wrist happens to be resting.

After striking out at Walmart and one pharmacy, we finally picked up a new unit at London Drugs. The Bios-labeled device is smaller than most standard options out there, but still not as compact or easy to store since we're back to dealing with a tube. It'll have to do. Jay and I are quite religious about taking our morning and evening readings. In fact, I have the statistics to prove it: at least a decade's worth of data that I've dutifully logged into my Android app. Let's just hope this new machine keeps the metrics flowing without developing any inflation drama.

Our Hyack Multicultural Parade

 

We headed uptown this morning at 11:00 for the annual Hyack Parade, soaking in an hour and fifteen minutes of prime civic pageantry. The Hyack Festival is a New Westminster institution, a community tradition that has been rolling down Sixth Street for over half a century.

 

Things have certainly shifted a bit since the COVID closures. We’ve noticed far fewer out-of-province floats or large high school marching bands making the trek these days, though somehow the folks from Marysville, Washington, always manage to get here!

Interestingly, it used to be billed as an International Parade, but I noticed this year it was explicitly advertised as a multicultural one. A wonderful cross-section of Canadian ethnic communities takes part, marching right alongside the traditional hometown staples like the city's Fire Department, the Scouts, local teams, and entrants from local businesses.  Clubs such as a local owners of antique Ford Thunderbirds and Fraternal organizations like the Shriners always show up.

The weather today was a little mixed, but thankfully there was no rain and we were actually treated to quite a stretch of really blue sky. We always attend. It just wouldn't be May in New West without it.