We got up the next morning and prepared to cross the border into Syria, which went smoothly really, even though our driver was a little bit of a worry, more for his compulsive duty-free shopping, and forgetting to put the hand brake on when he stopped at one point, rather than his actual driving, which was no more insane than anyone else's (it's all a relative thing.) He also became our 2nd driver to be pulled over by the police, this time for a badly-cracked windscreen! (Our first one had been fined for speeding.)
Upon arriving in Syria, our next stop was Damascus, which really doesn't need any introduction from me!
Damascus
Our driver wasn't allowed to drive us fully into Damascus for legal reasons (he was from another country), so we had to say goodbye to him some distance out of the city's centre and take taxis for the last leg to our hotel. We bundled into two taxis and headed on in. Now, I've been on a few slightly "exciting" taxi and bus rides before, but this one definitely took the cake. Picture, if you will, sitting inside a taxi with no seat belt on (but you're used to that by then), with the roads of the city filled with cars and people, and the driver constantly slamming the brakes to stop just short of hitting whatever person or vehicle happened to be in the way, and honking his horn impatiently to get people to move, constantly. We'd joked that we'd lost 15 years from putting on the Dead Sea mud, and my comment was that I'd just put it all back on again! On the way in, the taxi driver got out at one point to walk over to two cars that hadn't actually crashed, but were right in front of one another arguing over right of way, apparently, with fists flying at one point, and he and other people having to break them up.
After our gentle introduction to Damascus, we grabbed a felafel from a small street-side shop while we waited for our rooms to finish being prepared, then headed off to the local museum, which had an extremely impressive, large range of items and sculptures, both inside and out. I had even less time than the others, as I'd gone off to find an ATM that would actually talk to me, and I figured I'd have to go back the day after next before we headed out.
We spent the day going to the Old City, walking through part of the soukhs (more about that later), and visiting the Umayyad Mosque, which was very impressive:
The mosque has a small shrine inside, which is said to contain the head of St John the Baptist. It's very beautiful:
We also saw some of the Old City houses, some of which looked like they were about ready to fall down any second!
Unfortunately, I'd been feeling sick, uncomfortable, and in a certain amount of pain on and off during the day, so instead of having dinner with the others, I got a taxi back to the hotel, which was kind of adventure in itself, as we headed down the tiny streets of Old Town in the dark, and then through the much newer-looking modern part of the city.
A lot of the next day was a write-off for me, unfortunately, but I took myself out in the afternoon to see Azem palace, and walk around the soukhs properly for a bit. Azem palace was very nice, although most of the interesting things were inside small rooms, which unfortunately didn't allow photographs! The rooms were richly decorated from floor to ceiling, and definitely radiated important, and wealthy. The palace even had its own baths.
After having a proper chance to fully absorb the soukhs as I wandered through them, about the only word I could really use to describe it all was "wow". It was a near-sensory overload of walkways, people, and stalls selling just about everything from shoes to shisha pipes, with any amount of tacky, occasionally nice, things thrown in in between. It had a real atmosphere to it, and although I'd never really want to shop there on a regular basis (if at all!), I still found myself thinking that the shopping centres back in Melbourne were rather dull, sterile, and lifeless by comparison.
A lot of the laneways in the soukh were more like this, than the large, main concourse above:
Unfortunately I didn't really have the energy to go and see the museum again the next morning, but I felt I'd managed to get a good feel for Damascus even so, so I wasn't too disappointed.
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