I’m not sure if I should be glad, disappointed, or relieved to say this, but I’ll say it anyway: the first time I ever had a burger at McDonald’s was in Casablanca, Morocco.

I don’t get the McDonald’s hype—I can say that now, too. What’s so good about a tiny burger with a little bit of lettuce and ketchup with a chicken patty between two pieces of soggy bread. Seriously. I don’t.

We had McDonald’s for breakfast. After we searched in vain, we moved on to Hassan II Mosque, the seventh-largest mosque in the world according to Wikipedia and the third-largest according to our English-speaking tour guide. The minaret next to the mosque is, at 689 feet high, the tallest in the world. It is topped by a laser that points toward Mecca. The most ornate door in the mosque also faces towards Mecca. The mosque is right on the Atlantic Ocean, keeping the mosque cool—or, today, quite chilly. At least, the floors were cold against my bare feet. Thankfully there were carpets.

After the mosque, we wandered around until it started raining. Then we got a red taxi back to our hotel. Dad had said that it would be a petit taxi since it was red, but it wasn’t—it was a larger Mercedes. In our first taxi, Ethan had had to scrunch down in the back seat so the police wouldn’t see the back of his head because only three passengers could legally ride in the car.

Back at the hotel, we looked for a place for brunch (it was noon, but we still hadn’t had breakfast). So eventually, reluctantly, we settled on McDonald’s. Mom, Ethan, and I got the chicken burgers described above while Dad got a Chicken Mythic, which was by far the better choice since it had less-squished buns and more content. However, it had cost twice as much as ours, but I would have taken it!

We decided we’d done our tourist thing for the day, so Dad alternately napped and worked on pictures as the rest of us read. For supper, we went to the place that was closed last night. I particularly liked the desserts, which included orange sliced very thinly and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Ciao!