Damascus -- Bookstore, Four Seasons Hotel & Fruit Salad

During one of our last days in Damascus we walked with Samer and Basheer for a few hours and ended up at this Islamic bookstore where one of Basheer's friends worked.

Unfortunately for us his friend was quite busy so we were not able to talk to him much. We did meet a student from Chicago - Sarah, I believe. She was in Damascus learning Arabic and purchased a dictionary if I remember correctly.



I looked around the bookstore a bit and read some of the English titles while waiting to meet Basheer's friend. He was another Muhammad. We met several since it's the "Jacob" of the Muslim world.

Here are Samer, Muhammad Zuhair and Basheer. Literally this was about all the time we had with this guy except for the couple minutes it took for him and Basheer to gift us with these 3 volumes of The History of Islam.


See them here on my bookshelf at home. (The red box contains lovely maps which Mohammed Hazzaa gave us per Louai's instructions. And you can see some of the books I read last year on the shelf below.)


After walking for a good while, Samer decided to take us to the Four Seasons Hotel. It's beautiful and definitely out of our price range! Well, we could afford it, but why spend that much money on a room? Granted this place was N-I-C-E! But I am used to being frugal so the hostel it was for us. This was a great place to visit while downtown.


We felt a bit out of place here, but the people were very friendly and showed us around. I guess it didn't hurt that Basheer's cousin worked there and gave his crew instructions to show us some of the main areas.

A lovely place, huh?

One of the restaurants on the main floor.
I have more pictures of this place that I will share another day.
After walking most of the late morning and early afternoon, we stopped for lunch

and had these refreshing fruit salads. The guys got the chocolate hazelnut ones, while I settled for the nut-free salad on the right.

Pictures from Damascus, Syria
February 2009