A couple of weekends ago, Glenn and I escaped Beirut to make our second trip to Damascus. Once again, we stayed with Mona and Stephen. We hit the market in the old city and this time entered the massive mosque. I wasn't covered up enough, so we were forced to rent some really drab garb for me, complete with ridiculous velcro closures! It was hard to walk and it was super warm.
The art on the walls outside of the mosque itself (inside the square of the compound) was quite impressive. Stephen, Glenn and I went inside enormous carpeted prayer area, where we saw a large, roped-off display encased all around in green glass. We came over to have a closer look, and saw a shrine and and a tomb. I had no idea what I was looking at, so we checked out our guidebooks... and found out that we were looking at the place where the head of John the Baptist was entombed! Apparently, back in "the day", the Muslims used to allow Christians to worship there, but they don't anymore. Some people were taking pictures of this area, but we thought it was sort of bad form to snap pictures where people were in mid-prayer.
We topped off our couple of days in Damascus with a group dinner in a restaurant on top of the mountain overlooking the city. We heard that somewhere in the mountains there are caves where Cain and Abel (of biblical fame) were allegedly buried.
Here are some of the pictures that we took from that weekend.
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