{"id":25651,"date":"2025-04-09T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25651"},"modified":"2025-04-09T09:28:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T09:28:12","slug":"no-phone-no-internet-a-first-time-visit-to-casablanca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25651","title":{"rendered":"No Phone, No Internet: A First-Time Visit to Casablanca"},"content":{"rendered":"
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According to my pathetic map, I should have been close to the royal palace. But nothing in Casablanca\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for the palace,\u201d I said in rudimentary French, and pointed to my map. \u201cIt says it should be near here.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the girls glanced at the creased sheet of paper, and in a voice laden with teenage contempt, asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you have a phone<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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No, I did not have a phone. Or rather, I did, but I wasn\u2019t using it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On arriving in Casablanca for the first time, the author \u201cunderstood how difficult traveling unplugged here might be. There were no \u2018You are here\u2019 signposts … no clear indications, at least not to this non-Arabic reader, of which direction led to the city center.\u201d Above, Casablanca\u2019s Mers Sultan neighborhood.<\/span>Yassine Alaoui Ismaili for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Except for buying my airplane ticket, my plan was to explore Casablanca \u2014 a Moroccan city I had never visited \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

At a time when more and more of us are feeling the need for a digital detox<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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According to my pathetic map, I should have been close to the royal palace. But nothing in Casablanca\u2019s 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.\u201cI\u2019m looking for the palace,\u201d I said in rudimentary French, and pointed to my map. \u201cIt says it should be near here.\u201dOne of the girls glanced at the creased sheet of paper, and in a voice laden with teenage contempt, asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you have a phone?\u201dNo, I did not have a phone. Or rather, I did, but I wasn\u2019t using it.On arriving in Casablanca for the first time, the author \u201cunderstood how difficult traveling unplugged here might be. There were no \u2018You are here\u2019 signposts … no clear indications, at least not to this non-Arabic reader, of which direction led to the city center.\u201d Above, Casablanca\u2019s Mers Sultan neighborhood.Yassine Alaoui Ismaili for The New York TimesExcept for buying my airplane ticket, my plan was to explore Casablanca \u2014 a Moroccan city I had never visited \u2014 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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25653,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25654,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25651\/revisions\/25654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}