I can't promise I'll put any more updates here. I'm only doing this because I want to sit down for a while in this Internet Café.
We arrived in Damascus yesterday, after quite an unnecessarily long journey. It took a total of 1:45m to go across the border. The system of buying visas was hopelessly awful. The driver of our taxi was not pleased. We decided to give him $20 to appease him. It was an odd taxi. It had lots of Hizbollah paraphernalia in it and a picture of the virgin Mary. The other occupants had ringtones on their phones of some Hizbollah man shouting a sermon.
The hotel in Damascus (the Al Raj) is a bit of a dump, but at the price I'm not complaining. The owner is lovely, and his son and the other staff. We set off to explore the Old City a bit.
It's amazing, you should really go. It's souks are very extensive and it's not too touristy either. It's really worth a visit. We did see some squadrons of white people with tour guides occasionally. They all had the stereotypical cameras swinging from bellies, white baseball caps, checked shirts tucked in and brown leather belts. It was embarrassing. I saw another pack of Japanese tourists: the women all wearing the same style hat marching in a line, the men like lions circling the pack with cameras. I hate being a tourist sometimes.
When walking around in the evening we were approached by a man who offered us a "Maddame?". We're going to avoid that area at night again (it was in a side street off Martyrs Square). There were also (not in the same place – in the main souk), men wanting us to go upstairs to see their mother make silver jewelry. There were 5 different men along the street, each fairly old, their mother's must have been 150! Whatever was in the upstairs 'jewelry factory', we're staying well clear!
I'd better go, I want some food!
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