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According to my pathetic map, I should have been close to the royal palace. But nothing in Casablanca’s bustling Mers Sultan quarter, where trams rumble past shoe stores and cafes, looked remotely palatial. I tried one street, then the next. Finally, I approached some teenage girls in jeans and head scarves downing Diet Cokes outside a snack bar.
“I’m looking for the palace,” I said in rudimentary French, and pointed to my map. “It says it should be near here.”
One of the girls glanced at the creased sheet of paper, and in a voice laden with teenage contempt, asked, “Don’t you have a phone?”
No, I did not have a phone. Or rather, I did, but I wasn’t using it.
Except for buying my airplane ticket, my plan was to explore Casablanca — a Moroccan city I had never visited — without using the internet. That meant no online research, no GPS, no Ubers or Airbnbs, no virtual dictionary and no mindless scrolling to avoid social awkwardness.
At a time when more and more of us are feeling the need for a digital detox, I am keenly aware of how the internet, for all its benefits, has also changed travel for the worse. Not only does it play a key role in overtourism, but it has also flattened the sense of discovery. By allowing us to peruse restaurant menus, visualize sites and compile must-see lists, the internet tells us what we will experience before we arrive.
I knew from previous trips to other Moroccan cities that “ryad” or “riad” means “inn.” Soon Mohammed, a tall, bespectacled man, was welcoming me in the cushion-bedecked lobby, and didn’t seem offended when I asked to see the sole remaining room, a bargain at 360 dirhams, or about $37. It was simple and clean, but a little claustrophobic, with a window that opened onto an interior courtyard. I took the room, deciding I would look for something more spacious the next day.
In the meantime, I asked Mohammed for a map. “One minute,” he said, sitting down at his computer and printing one out from Google. About a dozen streets on it bore names; the rest was a tangle of lines.
My strolls brought more discoveries: downtown streets lined with Art Deco buildings; contemporary Moroccan art at the elegant Villa des Arts; the Abderrahman Slaoui museum, with its Berber jewelry and colonial-era travel posters.
I found my second hotel on a street of bougainvillea-draped villas. The rooms at the Doge (about 2,200 dirham), once a private home, leaned hard into their Jazz Age origins, with velvet-lined walls and at least one Josephine Baker photo. Staying there, amid the inlaid furniture and orange-blossom-scented soaps, I tried not to wonder whether there was even a more exquisite Casablanca hotel I hadn’t found.
I had to fight a twinge at the Central Market, where dozens of seafood stalls served fresh oysters and fish tagines. How to choose? I settled on Nadia’s because of the local businessmen there. Were the juicy grilled sardines drizzled with pungent chermoula sauce there the best in the market? They were the best I ate.
The same held true for the perfectly spiced chicken shawarma I sampled in the upscale Racine neighborhood, and the delicate gazelle horn pastries at a bakery in the Gauthier quarter — places I had chosen because they were busy with local customers.
But that strategy didn’t work in my quest for a sit-down restaurant serving traditional Moroccan food, since local diners often choose a cuisine different from the one they get at home. So when I walked into Le Cuistot’s tiled dining room, and heard Castilian Spanish, British English and New Jersey accents, I didn’t have high hopes.
If so, it was just one of his talents. Before Aziz became a chef, he told me, he had been a photographer for Hassan II, the same monarch who had ordered the construction of the imposing mosque. When that monarch died, Aziz decided it was time for a career change.
My conversation with Aziz — which wouldn’t have happened if I had been buried in my phone while dining — made me eager to see the palace where he had worked. So on my last day, the receptionist at the Doge printed out yet another Google map.
That’s when I got lost. After getting no help from the soda-drinking teenagers, I wandered for blocks, eventually asking directions from an older man who pointed to red flags in the distance: the palace.
Only it wasn’t open to the public. Ever, apparently.
The internet would have revealed this. Yet as I grappled with the realization that I had spent hours to reach those impenetrable walls, I spied a street lined with bookshops. At the very least, I thought, I might find a decent map.
And I did. But the street also led to shops selling handwoven rugs and copper tea sets, a courtyard filled with barrels of olives and a warren of whitewashed alleys that reminded me of Andalusia even before I came across a tiny museum of Andalusian instruments.
The Habous neighborhood almost looked like a stage set of Morocco, which is fitting, since it was designed by the French in the 1920s and ’30s.
I never did learn Imane’s favorite restaurants. But she told me of her mission to spread the message that we are all connected. Eventually, she pulled out her phone to broadcast us, live, as we chatted.
I had come all this way without my phone. I had gotten lost and found my way, discovered monuments and tiny jewels. I had developed a sense of the city as a place that still existed primarily for its residents, not its visitors.
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