Casablanca, Morocco Cruises

Highlights Tour- we had an exceptional guide. Great contrasts.

Visited: Sep 20, 2016

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I had visited Morocco six times prior to this port stop in Casablanca. I sailed with Costa and chose one of their tours of the city because I knew it would be hot. Choosing a tour is your best option if you're unfair with Morocco. Tourists often get scared away but aggressive sellers and taxi drivers. My advice would be not to engage with them. Say 'no', laugh it off and keep walking. You don't owe them an excuse. The port itself is a bit far from the city centre. I wouldn't walk it in the heat. If you didn't want to take a tour, you could always negotiate with a local taxi driver to give you a tour of the city. I've done this many times in other Moroccan cities but not Casablanca. I've paid drivers between $40 USD and $60 USD for five hours. Pay in local currency or euros.

Although it was a great experience to say we visited Africa, I would never willingly visit Morocco again. The city poor and scary.

Visited: Feb 03, 2018

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I read several reviews prior to going on this trip. They mentioned that the port was filthy and oil covered - totally untrue. Yes it was an industrial port and not near as pretty as most ports but I took an old pair of shoes to throw away after getting them all dirty - totally unnecessary. Of course I chose this port with a romantic picture of the movie in my mind and it was definitely not like that. Rick’s Cafe was great though - the food was delicious and extremely reasonable. We did not buy an excursion, we simply walked around. Easy to find the Mosque and Cafe and the Medina. We did hear about others having a bad/scary shopping experience. We did not we stayed in the center of things. Not as romantic as I pictured lol but I enjoyed myself very much.

So this was one of the big disappointments of the trip. We booked this cruise partially because of Casablanca and when we arrived on ship we were told that the weather was too bad to go to Casablanca and we would go to Tangier instead. Well, Tangier is not that far from Casablanca and the weather was fine that day so we are not really sure what the reason was for not going to Casablanca. We were VERY disappointed. Tangier was OK, but it wasn't where we booked the tour to go to. If the weather was bad, we would have understood, but it wasn't. We had to believe there was another reason that we were not told why we didn't go to Casablanca.

Visited: Dec 13, 2018

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