Buyout AsSham - Houses of Damascus

The houses of Syria are, in a word, amazing. There are alleyways throughout the old city and then very ornate doors that lead inside. Sometimes this leads directly into the courtyard of the house and sometimes it leads into another alley.

This picture on the left is of the second floor looking down from the my window on the third floor. The bathroom is on the left, and at the top of the picture is the trees coming up from the courtyard. The rooms all surround this open courtyard and there are terraces on every level.


Everywhere you look there is greenery. Vines climbing up the houses, potted plants on every step, trees growing right through the middle of the courtyard, and yesterday I even saw a house that had grapes randomly growing.





Last night there was a music festival at these huge beautiful homes all around the city. I went with my friend and her parents, who are originally from here to five different houses to hear old Arabic music with Ouds and other instruments whose names I don't know. How it worked was there were like 3 different bands assigned to each house, so someone was always playing. The crowds just moved from home to home to hear all the different ones.





** After all my comments about how lovely the houses are and how much I love the open courtyards in the middle, as I was sitting in the courtyard with my host family last night beneath a tree, a bird decided to release droppings all over my hair and shirt. I suppose there are downsides to the openness.