Old Vine Hotel Damascus

... Nubean, cross Algerian. Unknown string instruments wail and thrum, like heavy metal guitarists who have nibbled on a piece of the Taj Mahal peppered with a few grains of desert sand, read William Blake and turned it all into a skin-trilling thrill rhythm backed and fronted with the sweet roughness of rasping Arabic vocals.<br><br>It's an overpowering sound born of the senses that flies on the wings of multiply-synchopated backbeats. <br><br>Stuck between Israel, Palestine, Lebanon ...

... of Gekko sheep who miled around waiting for their leaders commands and got in the way of everybody who was trying get on the bus that took us from the terminal to the actual boat. We groaned at their incompetence and bit our tongues!!<br><br>The acytual ferry ride was fine, but it was the slowest 'fast' ferry ever. Happily we were able to exchange some money on the boat and the only real difficulty was that we were supposed to have our passports collected ...

... hummos and then freshened up to head up to Jebel Qassioun, a large mountain that overlooks all of Damascus. We drove up the mountain and planned to park and have some sheesha during the sunset which would be simple since the lookout was lined with coffee/hookah places...however the two places we went to wanted like $30JD just to sit and basically have water. Yea...no (shout out to DeVan again). So we moved along little dough-gies (spelled this way for the convenience ...

... to meet up with Mango and Omar. This place was like a market on speed. People everywhere, shiny things, shoes, socks being shoved in my face, strollers hitting the back of my ankle [damn the 36% of the Syrian population that is under the age of 16], traditional wares right next to a shop of lacy underwear and belly dancing outfits. Just as we were giving up, Mango found us! Then we all just wandered around, were treated to some delicious ice cream by ...

... Shona's bags, quiet a feat, and quickly ran off, with Shona running after him. Dino saw Shona walking away and followed. The porter put our bags down at an empty bus stop in the sun. "Money." "What for?" "Bags." "No." The guy wanted 50 Syrian pound for moving or bags, but the funny thing was Dino had just spent the last of our money, except for 10SP. Shona didn't want to give him anything. It was still another 45 minutes until the bus left. He had taken us out of the air-conditioning ...

... activity goes through a gov't proxy server). We're just hanging out in the hotel room making a few updates to the blog and our journals before heading out to the old city of Damascus at 430pm with Bashar to visit the Umyaad Mosque and a climb up Mount Qasiuon to view the sunset over the city of Damascus. Cynthia will be wanting to kill me with all of the mountain's we have been climbing!

... 20 feet high and very impressively carved and painted. There were lots of families enjoying the day out. I noticed the little girls were all dressed in fancy shoes or boots and skirts with matching jackets, or dresses with matching hats. The girls about 8 or 9 are now into the covered heads and skirts and sweaters or jackets. The square by the mosque has lots of bird seed sellers to feed the pigeons that hang around there. Back up the Souq al-Hamidiyya where there ...

... the desert, with no available water. Hope it works for them. Of course Sauls happening was a little more significant, which involved falling off his horse, going blind and changing his name to Paul. We learn more about all that in our day of touring Damascus - next entry.

... de passer le weekend chez lui ; c'est un peu chaud mais ca va, et puis pas besoin de visa il n'y a pas d'Etat. Bon. Une anecdote, également, plus légère, ayant passé la moitié de ma dernière nuit jordanienne à tenter de me débarasser de ces feuilles de menthe que je n'aurais pas du déguster avec l'hummus, lors du dîner de la veille. En Egypte le voyage pénible, en Jordanie le vomi ; j'ai ...

... for it to open so we went to Azem Palace instead. Azem Palace was built in the mid 1700s by an Ottoman governor of Damascus and is now the museum of popular arts and culture. The palace is quite spectacular with the amount of woodwork in the rooms even though some of the scenes that were depicting daily life during that time were a little corny. One of the most beautiful scenes was a lounge set made from dark wood and inlaid mother of pearl. There was so much ...