Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
But what was the hotel like before its conversion?
We walked past several similar places as we wandered the alleys in Damascus. Some like ours had been renovated. Some were shells with bars on the windows and filled with rubble. Apparently many of them are still owned by Jewish families living in Israel and protected by the Syrian police for "when the families come back".
-
Yeah, that happened to a bloke called Paul, once...
Yeah I think we saw the tomb that purported to contain his head ... or was that John's head ... someone's head anyways.
To expand on our hotel experience a bit.
We had crossed the border from Jordan to Syria earlier in the day, having spent the morning in the ruins of an amazing roman city in Jordan. We were prepared for several hours of questioning and searches to determine if we had ever been anywhere near Israel (they are still officially at war after all). Instead we were met by our guide who dealt very quickly with customs and it turned out to be one of the easier border crossings.
From there we went to the ruins of another roman city, there were a few of those on our trip but this was pretty impressive with an amazingly well preserved roman theatre, of much the same design as a modern stadium. It even came complete with a party of screaming schoolkids on a day trip. What was fascinating was to see the blend of Nabatean ruins (this apparently was where the Nabateans spent their summers when not in Petra) with Roman ruins with ruins of Mosques and even abandoned fruit and vege stores from the locals who had only recently been moved out by the government. 4000 years in a hundred meters.
Then we piled into our van and drove towards Damascus. As we drove we noticed the weather changing and we ended up driving through a spectacular lightening and rain storm. After having to stop a couple of times because the engine was overheating we drove through the storm and out the other side into Damascus, which turned out to be a huge modern city full of maniacs in cars. Do not even consider self-driving in Damascus!
Our driver found his way to the old city without killing us or anyone else on the roads and we piled out of the van. We then proceeded to wheel our bags through about half a kilometer of the alleys weaving in and out of the evening shoppers and going ooh and ah at the stuff in the shops as we went by. We finally found our way to a nondescript door on a back alley. I guess at that point I wasn't really sure what to expect but the door opened into the hotel seen in the pictures in the above post.
That first night we dumped our bags in our amazingly pretty rooms and went down to dinner in the open air courtyard. The food was good and we were hungry. But halfway through dinner the storm we had driven through caught up with us and it started to rain. They closed the sliding roof, but the weather was a bit more than the design could handle and the rain coming down the walls of the courtyard found it's way into lighting circuits, which resulted in a charming candle lit dinner :). It says a lot for the staff and the feel of the place that what could have been an unpleasant experience instead became a highlight of the trip.
-
We just did an amazing trip round the middle east and ended up somewhat randomly in this hotel in Damascus. Really the pictures show only half the joy of the place. We really did get to sleep in that four poster bed and the staff were great.
If you get the chance at all, visiting Syria and particularly the old city in Damascus is an amazing experience and if you can, try and stay at the Shahbandar Palace. Note you can't drive a car to the hotel door the streets are too narrow so backpack or good wheels on your bags are a must :). -
...and men like me, will always do their damnedest to see through every disguise to the core...
Perhaps it's because I grew up spending every summer at a nudist camp - but I have a different view.
Sure the bare undisguised human body is a beautiful thing in all it's variety. There is nothing like growing up around real human bodies to understand that the hollywood definition of beautiful is bollocks and that real beauty is more about being happy inside your body.
But the "disguises" people choose can be every bit as beautiful (as the corsets shown prove) and say a lot about how the person underneath desires to be seen.
Clothing can be functional, fun, expressive, attractive, amusing, sexy, conservative ...
If what you are really saying is that it's the mind inside the body inside the clothes you are interested in, well that mind made choices when they got dressed to go out to dinner with you and those choices are part of that person too.
-
I've always wondered how nudist volleyball doesn't get completely halted by weeping and swearing.
You don't have to be nude.
And oddly enough never seen any games stopped due to excessive movement of body parts. I guess you just get used to swinging free.
-
Hi David
More shameless exploitation of Kate to illuminate your lives for us.
Wonderful stuff as usual, the world through the eyes of a child is an amazing place.
It's so nice to read something in the morning that makes one smile.
-
I don't think you need to be shot yet Russell.
From my perspective, if your sons ever read your blogs later in their lives they'll see just how much care and love you hold for them. That doesn't seem like exploitation to me.
However David shameless baby photo blogging is a whole 'nother story...
-
It just happens that I have spent a fair chunk of my working life trying to engineer apples without cores.
-
I've always been of the opinion that by the time you're an adult, you have developed a personal belief system that allows you to function and in most cases function happily.
Any event that disrupts that belief system is usually pretty damn traumatic. For most folks it's a genuinely painful experience.
So why do we allow people to wander around trying to disrupt other people's belief systems when we know that it will cause them grief and heartache and genuine pain.
For me, attempting to change someone's religion (or lack thereof) is one of the nastiest things you could do. You are assaulting them. Pure and simple.
Unless you have training and knowledge to deal with the damage you are trying to do (ie you are a trained therapist) you are much better off talking about politics.
-
Or Hadyn could dress as me
I'm not sure Hadyn could pull off a Green Onion Slave Girl.
And if he does, I'm really sure I don't want to see it.
the Indians were probably the initial target, but, hey, any touring team will do to cause a bit of mayhem. One can hypothesise motives...
But that's the problem, by the time a person or group of people have reached the point where they think killing other people is a reasonable way of achieving their goals, it's no longer possible to sensibly hypothesise their motives. They are by definition so far outside normal that you can't realistically imagine why.