An Accidental Hooligan

I am not exactly a devoted follower of the FIFA World Cup; in fact, my knowledge of the tournament is exceptionally limited. However, a completely pragmatic decision to spend my final, unexchangeable dirhams at the Casablanca airport last week has inadvertently turned me into a partisan football supporter.

 

I purchased this branded bucket hat strictly as a financial transaction to avoid dragging useless currency back to New Westminster. Yet, serendipity has intervened. Tonight, Morocco faces the Netherlands in the knockout stage. If my newly adopted Atlas Lions manage to win, their next opponent will be Canada.

It seems that a simple airport impulse buy has left me entirely prepared to sit on the balcony and face a profound crisis of national loyalty over a sport I rarely watch. The true winner of this tournament might just be my effort to avoid foreign exchange fees.

The End of the Journey

We were first at our hotel buffet at 5:50 am.

Day 28 - Jay and I concluded our Moroccan journey on the tarmac in Casablanca with a textbook IT error. The airline swapped our aircraft but failed to transfer the seating manifest. This resulted in a two-hour delay and a fascinating display of administrative confusion. First, everyone waited an hour in the concourse while ground staff struggled with their screens. Eventually, those who had already boarded were forced to return to the terminal.

The captain came out to address the crowd during the initial wait. He bravely attempted to soothe the passengers but only spoke English; almost everyone else on the plane spoke French or Arabic. It was quite a choice in communication. The rest of the delay unfolded after the manual boarding system also failed. It is hard to believe the aviation system operated smoothly before the era of widespread IT networks.

Over the Atlantic two hours late out of Casablanca. 

This delay actually worked in our favor. We had a tedious four-hour layover scheduled in Montreal. The delay ate up that extra time, leaving us with a much better one-and-a-half hour connection. It was just enough time to collect our bags from the carousel and immediately hand them to a waiting attendant for security reasons. Going through the Montreal security check again was not a big deal.

A completely full flight from Montreal to Vancouver.  

The final, five-hour flight to Vancouver was packed. The transcontinental push is always an endurance test. However, it felt good knowing the two of us were finally heading to the West Coast.

Since we officially entered the country in Quebec, we sailed out of YVR after just a few minutes of waiting for our bags in the domestic section of the airport. Our Uber driver dropped us at our door in New Westminster at exactly 8:13 pm. Now the only things left of the trip are the new memories and a few loads of dirty laundry.

Ending Our 2026 Moroccan Experiences

Day 27 - ​We began our final full day in Morocco with the rarest of travel luxuries: time. There was no train to catch or schedule to follow. We simply sat for a slow, deeply satisfying buffet breakfast at the Ibis City Centre. It was exactly what we needed.

​Afterward, Jay and I walked around the old part of Casablanca. We wandered through the older city streets without a specific destination in mind. The chaos of the local medina felt remarkably different today. I noticed we were observing the crowds rather than actively wrestling with them. A subtle but important shift in perspective.

Later in the afternoon, we sat near the tram and train station to watch the commuters heading home. I always try to spend time while traveling just soaking in an environment. I realize I am at a very particular earth coordinate. I become a participant simply by breathing the air and watching the local activities unfold. It feels like an honour to share the space where others occupy their lives. I know perfectly well that I may never get the chance to be in this exact place again.

This month-long Moroccan trip is finally complete. We navigated the rails to Tangier, wandered the blue-rinsed steps of Chefchaouen, and survived the massive labyrinth of Fes. We endured camel treks into the Sahara, explored Marrakech, and felt the coastal winds of Essaouira and Agadir before returning right back here to our starting point. Tomorrow, we face the international departure terminal. For today, however, we are just enjoying the quiet satisfaction of a great journey.

Marrakech to Casablanca

Day 26 - It was already Monday. The sun rose over the swimming pool at the ibis Marrakech Centre Gare. The water served as a nice backdrop, which was fortunate, because the actual breakfast offering was fairly mediocre. At 9:00 am, the air was still pleasant. Jay and I enjoyed a brief moment of quiet before packing up to seek the coastal breeze of Casablanca. The two of us had positioned ourselves next to the train station for a reason, and soon enough, it was time to leave.

 

Our train departed right on time at 9:35. For $20 CAD each, we found our seats on the Al Atlas line. The stated two-hour and fifty-minute schedule is definitely not the high-speed route. Maximum speed reached maybe 150 kph, but the train mostly coasted at 100 or 120 kph. We were assigned to a six-person compartment layout, squeezing us into cramped quarters with strangers. The true cultural immersion, however, was the relentless noise of un-headphoned telephone calls and app notifications echoing off the walls. Still, it was an experience worth the price of admission. We noted the whole train was surprisingly crowded for a Monday.

The journey eventually fell victim to track delays. Most of the slowdowns occurred within 30 kilometres of the city, costing us nearly an hour. Our arrival at Casa Voyageurs finally happened close to 13:15.

Once off the train, Jay and I dutifully followed the official taxi signs. Naturally, these directions led us to the entirely wrong side of the cavernous station. After receiving an initial extortionate quote of 150 MAD ($22.50 CAD) over there, we proceeded back through the station to emerge at the front side. This started a complex negotiation with a gauntlet of local drivers for a petite taxi to Casa Port. Jay did not just argue with one driver; he took on several. Sometimes, after another blatantly stupid offer, the only viable choice was to walk away muttering. I would have caved at 30 MAD ($4.50 CAD) just to escape the chaos. However, Jay stood firm through multiple attempts. He finally convinced one driver to accept a mere 20 MAD ($3.00 CAD). He still firmly believes it should have been 10 or even 8 MAD, but a win is a win.

 

We are now checked into our repeat hotel, the Ibis Casablanca City Center. The final leg of our Moroccan trip is settled for the next two nights before Wednesday's Air Canada departure. After dropping the bags, Jay and I headed just across the street to the edge of the medina for lunch at a familiar spot. The atmosphere was entirely different this time. When we were first here nearly a month ago, a national religious break had lulled the metropolis into a rare slumber. Today, Casablanca is running full steam ahead: loud, bustling, and unapologetically itself.

 

We are currently waking up from a late nap and have not decided how to spend the evening yet. In fact, we are presented with an entire, unplanned day tomorrow before we fly home. "Yay!"

From our hotel window at the Casa Port Ibis Central, room 618 window.

Agadir to Marrakech

Day 25 - Jay and I finished an early breakfast at the Dominium Hivernage Hotel and wrapped up our final coastal meal by 8:15 AM. Catching a taxi, the two of us got a ride to the local Supratours terminal in Agadir. The city's new grande gare is clearly not quite finished. This forced us to board our coach in a nearby staging lot; fortunately, the morning arrangements went off without a hitch.

 

Driving away, I was genuinely surprised by how rapidly the outskirts of Agadir are developing. The massive sprawl heavily reminded Jay of our early days in the Gulf, where entire new neighborhoods seemingly appeared on maps overnight. It seems that education and technology are the primary drivers of this sustained growth across the south.

 

Once clear of the urban expansion, the journey inland was a perfectly civilized morning drive. We owe that entirely to the A3 motorway. Operating as a modern, four-lane divided highway, it actively keeps the mountain slopes to highly manageable inclines. Slicing straight through the High Atlas, this feat of civil engineering spared the two of us from the old nausea-inducing switchbacks of the national roads. Fittingly, my partner and I traversed this exact mountain stretch on the sixteenth anniversary of its official opening.  We had one short break and got into this city station a bit early at 13:00.

 

Upon arriving in Marrakech, Jay and I grabbed a late lunch near the station to get a feel for the immediate neighborhood. I had booked the Ibis Marrakech Centre Gare for the night. Built in 1990 for pure transit convenience, the property wisely features a courtyard pool to actively counter the inland heat. Taking advantage of the water proved to be an absolute treat after a morning of highway travel. The hotel itself is typical for an Ibis; the rooms are tiny and efficient. However, since the building is just a 10-minute taxi ride from the main Jemaa el-Fnaa square, the two of us will probably go for a final visit to one location on the earth that feels unique but strangely quite personal. Afterall, today's the summer solstice here and the longest day of the year. I know we won't need to rush for the train tomorrow. The station literally could not be any closer.

Essaouira to Agadir

Day 22 - Jay and I checked out of the Essaouira hotel room around 11:30 AM. We waited out the usual post-checkout lobby time before dragging our bags to Bab Doukkan to hail a petite blue taxi. This was followed by a solid stretch of pleasant waiting and observation at the tiny station until nearly 2:00 PM. That is when our bus finally arrived from Casablanca. Defying all known laws of transit, it departed precisely on schedule at 14:30.

​The three-and-a-half-hour journey south along the N1 quickly traded the flat landscape of argan trees for an inland detour through the dense banana plantations of the Tamri estuary. Approaching Taghazout, the geography finally decided to show off. The High Atlas Mountains abruptly crowded the coastline. This forced the highway up to trace the edge of high cliffs. We enjoyed excellent views of the Atlantic surf pounding the rocky shoreline below before the mountains finally yielded. The dramatic ridges smoothed out entirely as the bus descended onto the flat plain of the Souss Valley. Jay and I pulled into the Agadir station exactly on time at 5:45 PM.

​Upon disembarking, he and I went straight to the Supratours office tent to buy our Sunday tickets. We successfully locked in the 9:30 AM departure to Marrakech; this ensures the final leg of our return journey toward Casablanca is sorted. With those details handled, we simply walked out the station gate, flagged down a taxi, and made the final short drive to unpack at the Dominium Hivernage.

​Once settled, I opened Google Maps to locate the nearest block of dining options in the surrounding Founty district. A short walk led us to a brightly lit establishment claiming to be a Ajikol Pizzeria. Naturally, we ignored the pizza entirely and ended our transit day eating meat skewers off a stick.

​It is now nearing 10:00 PM. Considering I have compressed an entire day's worth of travel fatigue into a single afternoon, we are opting to simply go to sleep. The Atlantic Ocean has been sitting out there for roughly 200 million years. It can certainly wait for us to be adequately rested before we wander down to the beach to see it.

A Final Day in Essaouira

Day 21 - Jay and I treated our final day in this coastal city with the respect it deserved. For fifty-one weeks of the year, Essaouira is a quiet place that prioritizes a bohemian arts scene over the relentless hustle of a city like Marrakech.  I have to admit a certain fondness for the city's old colonial moniker, Mogador. It sounds exactly like a gritty, sun-blasted fortress straight out of Game of Thrones. As it turns out, HBO's location scouts entirely agreed; Essaouira's dramatic sea walls and ramparts were heavily utilized in Season 3 to stand in for the fictional slaver city of Astapor.

 

In reality, that imposing name is essentially a two-thousand-year game of colonial telephone. The Phoenicians called their tiny trading post migdol, meaning small fortress. Centuries later, Portuguese colonizers arrived, completely butchered the name of a local saint, Sidi Mogdoul, and slapped "Mogador" on the map. The city finally shed the typo in the 1760s when a Moroccan Sultan hired a French architect to construct a perfectly gridded seaport from scratch. Thrilled with the precise geometry, he officially renamed it Essaouira: classical Arabic for "the well-designed."

Jay and I eventually made our way out to the main beach. This stretch of sand borders the immediate coastline for a solid two kilometers before stretching up to ten kilometers further down the bay. It was genuinely pleasant to navigate the flat, easily walkable grid of the medina. Both of us discovered new alleyways lined with the usual array of tourist businesses, including argan oil boutiques, local art galleries, ceramic shops, and tiny cafes. After getting our fill of the sea breeze, we walked back toward the center of town and grabbed a satisfying lunch for two that managed to come in under 100 MAD, or roughly 13.50 CAD.

 

Tomorrow, we will board a CTM bus bound for Agadir. That destination will provide a stark contrast in Atlantic coastal living. Essaouira is defined by its ancient stone ramparts and an artsy atmosphere fueled by constant trade winds; Agadir is an entirely different product. Following a devastating earthquake in 1960, Agadir was completely rebuilt. The pair of us will trade these historic stone alleys for wide boulevards, concrete hotels, and a calm, wind-protected beach engineered primarily for package holidays and sunbathing.

 

Our departure tomorrow is perfectly timed. Next weekend, Essaouira will host the 27th annual Gnaoua and World Music Festival. For three days, the city transforms into a capital of musical fusion, drawing roughly half a million visitors to experience traditional, trance-inducing Moroccan heritage music. The typically quiet medina alleys and empty beaches we just enjoyed will be entirely consumed by open-air stages, large sound systems, and immense crowds. Neither of us has any desire to navigate that level of congestion. Slipping out to the calmer shores of Agadir a full week before the chaos begins feels like a brilliant move.

Another Day in Essaouira

​Day 20 - Jay and I took our breakfast upstairs at the hotel right at nine o'clock. The morning began looking rather grey. The ocean seemed to lack its usual enthusiasm, with the waves barely slapping the edge of the seawall. In all weather, I genuinely appreciate the morning meals here; they provide a perfectly civilized start to the day.

​As the morning progressed, the sky returned to its usual brilliant blue.  Our immediate priority after breakfast was hunting down the CTM bus station to secure our Thursday departure to Agadir, which will also serve as our final checkout day from Riad Mimouna. Neither of us likes to leave transit logistics to chance. Google Maps suggested it would be a brisk thirty-minute walk out of the medina and past the city hospital. Naturally, the algorithm wildly overestimated our pace, assuming everyone marches with unrealistic haste and never pauses for physical reality. It took us closer to forty-five minutes to cover the distance, but once we arrived, we instantly secured both tickets for a total of 220 MAD (29.70 CAD).

​Rather than trudge back through the unremarkable sprawl of the city, Jay and I flagged down a typical Moroccan petit taxi. They are painted red here. The driver asked for a mere 10 MAD (roughly 1.35 CAD) to deliver us straight to the gates of Bab Doukkala.

​From the gate, the two of us walked back through the Mellah, the city's historic Jewish quarter. It is a fascinating stretch of the medina, though undeniably melancholic. At its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Jewish community actually constituted nearly half of Essaouira's population. However, following Moroccan independence and the geopolitical shifts of the 1950s and 60s, the area experienced a massive demographic collapse. Working-class families predominantly emigrated to Israel, while the wealthier merchant class largely relocated to France and Canada. Today, the original residents are essentially gone, leaving only architectural echoes and a few preserved sites behind.

​With our transit tickets officially secured, we were free to lock down our accommodations for the remainder of this journey. That endeavor kept both of us and the Expedia servers rather busy for a few minutes. From this point forward, the heavy lifting is over; we are simply connecting the dots on the map until our flight home on June 24th.

​We enjoyed a rather fine lunch tucked away in an undiscovered lane within the medina. Jay and I ordered the turkey skewers, which arrived flanked by French fries, assorted salads, and a blisteringly good hot tomato, rice, and pepper mixture straight from the grill. Washed down with a 1.5-litre bottle of water, the entire affair set us back a mere 70 MAD (roughly 9.45 CAD). It was an absolute steal, especially given the impeccably clean and pleasant setting.

​After a highly necessary afternoon nap, we are presently gearing up for our evening plans. The agenda includes securing dinner, logging some additional miles on foot, and watching the sun drop into the Atlantic. For the record, it is officially scheduled to vanish at exactly 20:45 tonight. All things considered, it has been a rather pleasant, slow-burn of a day.

A Day in Essaouira

 

Day 19 - Our day did not begin with any particular urgency. We simply slept in. At a highly civilized 9:00 AM, we hiked upstairs for a spectacular buffet breakfast that boasted arguably the best coastal view in town. A thick pane of glass was all that separated our refined pastries from the relentless wind whipping off the Atlantic. Finally, we found a place that absolutely nailed every single Moroccan breakfast specialty. They did it with pure class.

Suitably fortified, we hit the streets to properly map the medina. We found the central mosque and walked straight toward the sea. Naturally, this deposited us right at the Supra Tours bus station where we had arrived yesterday. Then, reality hit. We discovered they do not run buses to Agadir. That southern coastal city has always been part of our grand master plan. Realizing our go-to bus company just abandons its passengers on the coast meant we had to pivot quickly.

We briefly considered a day trip. Basic math crushed that dream instantly. It is a three-hour drive there. It is another three hours back. Six hours staring at highway tarmac is not a vacation. We asked the hotel about a private driver, but the price tag was absurd. Plus, the sheer exhaustion made it a terrible idea. The day trip concept was axed without a second thought.

Instead, we sat down and ironed out the exact timeline for the rest of our Moroccan adventure. We are staying put. After tonight, we will hold our ground here in the medina for two more days. Our hotel is pressed right up against the historic sea wall, known as the Skala de la Ville. Back in the 18th century, a sultan hired a French military architect to build these massive stone ramparts to fend off sea invasions. Today, they are lined with vintage European brass cannons still stubbornly pointing at the ocean. It makes for a brilliantly dramatic home base.

Once we finally break camp, we will slide down the coast to Agadir for a three-night traditional beach holiday. The grand finale journey back to Casablanca will require a one-night transit stop in Marrakech. From there, we will catch the high-speed rail connection and position ourselves in our departure city for the final nights of the 22nd and 23rd. The logistical puzzle is officially solved.