Damascus -- Our Room at the Hostel

We arrived in Damascus in the wee morning hours of Friday, January 30. We walked the long way to the hostel because none of us were excited about climbing the ladder at 2:30 in the morning. (I discuss the two options here.) As you can see Andrew and I were very excited to be at our destination. We had to stop and take pictures along the way. OK, maybe that was more my "had to stop" than his . . .

Since the hostel just happened to be in the Christian
quarter, Bab Touma, we found statues of
the Virgin Mary in this traditional area.

Samer and Ahmad (Jake) came with the hostel driver to greet us at the airport. Here we stopped along the walk to the hostel so I could get a picture with them. I think I'm standing in front of a water fountain.

Finally we got to our room and found we
each had a bed like this to sleep on.

Also there was this sofa. We decided to get pictures of
the room before it got too cluttered with our stuff.

Had to get a picture of this bathroom. The shower was unlike any I was familiar with. It wasn't so bad except that there was no division between it and the rest of the bathroom. So most everything got wet when we used it.

One day Samer saw this room decoration on the shelf above the
sofa and demonstrated how to play this old instrument.

Andrew decided to give it a try. Notice our room is circular.
It was in the tower.

The sofa became Samer's sofa. He was our right-hand man,
and the sofa was his "office" if you will. I'm sure here
he is planning another meeting for us.

Many times in the evenings we would set up Samer's laptop
and view the pictures we'd taken that day.

Later I will show some pictures from within
the hostel, but outside of our room.

Pictures from Damascus, Syria
January/February 2009