Thursday in Damascus

We woke up on the roof, it was quite pleasant.
We missed the mosque last night because we ran so late and got caught up with all of the men dragging us into their stores, “just to look”. Uck. So, we are going to head over to the Old City again and go directly to the mosque.

So we walk over, it’s already hot (of course) and melty, we walk through the whole souk, it goes on and on. And we come out in the screaming sun in front of the gates of the mosque, which is huge. We watch for a few minutes to see what the etiquette is, Lexie has been wearing her headscarf all morning, and I have to remedially put mine on just wrapped like crazy. And we have to take off our shoes before stepping over the entrance, so we do AND… get turned away. The guy says that we have to buy a ticket to get in. That’s kinda odd, just us have to buy a ticket?? There are thousands of people walking in the gate without a ticket. I think that they are profiling. So we walk down the wall until we see the sign that says something to the effect of “clothes changing room” and we walk in to buy our tickets to the mosque. There is a man behind the desk, he says that it’s 50 pounds per person, so Lexie (our money person in Damascus) blesses this outlay. When we pay, he gives us a ticket and then tells us to get 2 burkas, one off of the #1 rack for Lexie and one off of the #4 rack for me. Interesting. We pull these hideous robes with Velcro and hoods off of the racks as we are told and put them over our clothing. They are an ugly greige color (combo of gray and beige). And then we walk back to the gate looking totally stupid. They may as well as had us wear blinking signs on our heads that say, “Caution tourist, not muslim!!” We take off of our shoes and enter and show our tickets. The inside court is entirely outside with a cover porch around the entire outside. It looks like the faithful come and sit with their favorite Imam teacher. There are muslim holy men stationed around with groups of people sitting on the marble at their feet listening, both men and women. They are on the shaded side of the courtyard. Even in the center, which is under complete sun, the white marble floor keeps it cooler on your feet. There’s an elevated room on stilts, towards one end, I don’t know the purpose, and in the center is a pavilion with water spigots and people washing their feet and hands. We walk a little outside and then go back to the gate to go inside the mosque itself to one side. We walk in, and there’s a sort of “coat check” where you can leave your shoes and belongings, we choose to hang onto ours, and we swing wide around a barrier of posts and chain draped between 4’ high movable posts. The kind that you see to form lines at a bank. And then we realize that only women are on one side and men on the other. And then in a little slice down the center are more muslim teachers and singers, so that they can speak to both the women and men at the same time. They each have a gathering at their feet. Down at the end is a ornate little room completely inside the bigger building with green windows – the women’s chain barrier jigs away from the center to allow the women to get near this building and touch it, which they are doing. We took a photo (photos are completely allowed) and asked our hotel guy what that building is and he said that’s where the prophets are. I’m not entirely sure what that means. We want a photo with both me and Lex is our hideous outfits, but don’t want to bother the faithful, so we walk up to a single woman in the same get-up. She gladly takes our pic and then asks if we would take hers too, she’s alone and wants a photo. We head out, and are able to remove our robes at the gate and put them in the dirty clothes basket (??). Then we dink around the enormous souk, re-visit Lexie’s carpet friend, Noor, and I buy another wrap. Yesterday he wanted to give Lexie a free rug, but not so me. I should have had her bargain, he wants to rip me off. We get back and our room STILL is not ready, they tell us to wait for cleaning, even though it’s been a couple of hours. I glance in and it’s a HUGE room, 4 beds and our own bathroom – gawl.


Lexie wanted to go back to the Art Café that we’d found that first night after ditching Sam. We were going to have a little lunch and read/type. We LOVE the art café and they love us. I ordered the most fantastic Lentil soup, and Lexie had the Art Soup, which was a lamb, tomato and veggie soup. Fantastic! And she drank Turkish coffee her fave. My tummy is pretty woozy, so soup and 7-up are good enough for me. Then I plug in the computer and type for awhile. The owner notices us and wants to buy our drinks and we insist on paying, so later he sends over a sensational nutella and chocolate crepe – it’s beautiful and decadently yummy. Like pick up the plate and lick it yummy! We stay for a couple of hours and then tip big and head out.
It's a slow day, with no travel, so I won't bore you with insignificant stuff. We are in Beirut now, and it's fantastic!!!! Most of Lebanon is mountainous and they go right down to the Mediterranean Sea and there's Beirut, I'll tell you more tomorrow. But I might be able to upload some photos and we'll be able to see Facebook.