Morocco

Morocco hit different from the moment the plane banked over Casablanca and I could see the Hassan II Mosque sitting right at the edge of the Atlantic — this enormous white structure just jutting out into the ocean like it had always been there. Nothing from photos prepares you for the scale of it up close: the carved marble, the hand-cut zellige tiles catching the flat grey Atlantic light, the minaret so tall it disappears into low cloud. I walked the esplanade slowly, kept stopping, kept looking up.

The medinas and markets were where the trip really got into my skin though. The spice souk smelled like cumin and dried ginger all at once, every stall stacked floor-to-ceiling with neat pyramids of whole spices I couldn't name. The fruit carts on the street had this almost absurd abundance — pineapples next to pomegranates next to avocados — all arranged with a care that felt like art. And at night, eating in a riad with zellige walls and candlelight, the tajine arriving in its clay pot still steaming, I thought: this is what the country actually is, this overlap of ornament and everyday life.

I came expecting the postcard version and left with something harder to describe — a place that is genuinely old and genuinely alive at the same time. The Atlantic cold coming off the Casablanca corniche, the call to prayer echoing between the buildings at dusk, the way every doorway seemed to open onto another layer of detail. I want to go back and go deeper — Fes, Chefchaouen, the south. Morocco felt like a country I barely scratched.