Afamia Damascus

in damascus for one more night and will be heading for Amman, Jordan tomorrow sometime. it's HOT here so we are hiding in an internet care until it cools down a bit. hardly any wireless to speak of, facebook is blocked, and did i say it's HOT! the city is neat though. a lot less conservative than the rest of the country we've seen. again sleeping on roof top of Al Rabie hotel with like 30 other people and it's not cheap either. last night, was ...

... wing a guard jumped in front of me and I am thinking what in the world did I do wrong. Nothing but missing a room behind a closed set of heavy wooden French doors it turned out. He directed me back in that direction and behind the doors was a room painted top to bottom in geometrical patterns. I couldn't make out anything the docent was saying except that the rows of chairs in there had gold in the fabric.

I think this building used to be the prime ...

... my camel lamp, serving trays, and a couple of wall sconces and Anita bought a camel lamp and a serving tray.  This shop is great as they would deliver all of our purchases back to the hotel so we wouldn't have to carry it the rest of the day.  From there we wandered Straight Street up towards Old Town Restaurant for lunch.  Straight Street last year was all under construction and a mess. This year, the changes were amazing!  The street was done with great sidewalks and really ...

... end which is at the Umay Yad mosque's wall. Here there are some remains of the old Roman columns and walls. We then walk around 2 sides of the mosque. We see holes in the huge blocks and wonder if they are from bullets. We were going to go in but couldn't find where to buy the tickets to get in. We follow along the old narrow streets and end up following a little boy of 8 or 9 who has just picked up 2 bags of pita bread and was carrying it on his head. We asked if ...

Hey People I am still shaking from my traumatic cab ride experience. This morning I caught a service cab from Beirut to Damascus. Since this was my second service cab experience I was a bit wiser, I negotiated a non-smoking cab and bought two seats for $40 so I could enjoy the entire front seat to myself. But shortly after the driver pulled out of the garage I was wishing that I chose a seat in the back. The vehicle had no seat belts and the driver ...

... by St Luke as well as women who come to pray for fertility. The convent was built on the site where Justinian saw the vision of the Virgin Mary who told him to build a church here. So, who wouldn't? As you climb the steps you reach the spot where a nun spilled oil on the step resulting in an outline of the Virgin Mary. Do you see it in the picture? At least they have a cage around you so you won't slip on the spilt oil. Again ...

... its beauty. Last night we went for dinner and on our way ran into Sally and Tony buying prickly pears from a kid on a street corner. We each tried one, looked back at the kid to tell him they were good, and he was gone! We saw him bolting across the square for an unknown reason. We then looked to the other side of us and saw a police officer who was confiscating a man's bike. Sally followed the kid and got the story ...