Travel Tips

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Gardens

There are gardens (bustaan in Arabic) all over Sana'a old city, but they are gradually being eaten up by new houses. Sometimes they are hard to spot, as most are enclosed by walls too tall to see over, so you can only really see them from rooftops...however there are one or two "open" ones. You can't really go into any of the gardens as they are certainly not parks...instead, they are used to grow fruit and vegetables, as well as places to keep animals.

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Houses and Streets

There are not many specific houses to visit in Old Sana'a, although one or two of the old caravanserais and samsarats have been renovated and filled with art galleries and souvenir shops. The main attraction is just wandering around getting lost and stumbling upon amazing houses which are just that...houses where people live.

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This particular building is now a hotel...the Arabia Felix Hotel...I don't know what it is like inside, but the outside is one of the best examples of Sana'ani architecture. For the sharp-eyed among you, yes, that is a camel in the foreground. In fact he is a rather special camel, having only one eye...this makes him ideal to use in the grinding mill next door to the hotel, as he naturally walks round in circles pulling the equipment to grind the flour. I really wanted to get a picture of him "in action", but on this particular day he was ill, so his owners tied him up outside to get some air...the poor thing was dizzy!!!

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view from inside

Most Sana'ani old city houses have beautiful windows of stained-glass...here is a picture of one of these windows, inside the Sana'a Institute for Arabic Language.

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Mosques

Sana'ani mosques are beautiful...each one is architecturally different, and each one stunning. Unfortunately, mosques are not open to non-muslims, so you will have to be content with admiring them from outside...the best views are from rooftops in the old city (try any of the old city hotels, and the National Centre for Art in Souq al-Milh has a great rooftop which you can visit for free).

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Souqs

The souqs in Sana'a are amazing...although I have just about memorized the route from Bab Al-Yemen to Bab ash-Shu'oob on the opposite side of the old city, I still get lost if I try to find my way anywhere else...a useful tip is not to get lost in the souqs if you are in a hurry to get to a lesson! Otherwise, the best way to explore the souqs, like the rest of the city, is to blunder off the main street into the small alleyways and get hopelessly lost!

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All the souqs in the old city are collectively known as Souq al-Milh (Salt Market), although you'd be hard pressed to actually find any salt...what you will find is just about everything else. Each street seems to have a certain theme...there is a street full of jambiyya shops like the one above, a souq for second-hand clothes, a spice market, and even a raisin souq selling more varieties of raisins than you ever knew existed!

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I timed my photographs well as usual...I used to walk through the souqs and see so many potential photos, but almost never had my camera with me. Instead, I left it until 'Eid had just passed, so most shops were shut and the streets were uncharacteristically empty. Now I regret not having a camera suitable for night-time shots, as during Ramadan the souqs stayed open practically all night, some streets lit by candlelight only.
This photo was taken just inside Bab al-Yemen, an area which is usually jam-packed with people and market stalls.

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The spice souq...well, unfortunately the most colourful spice shops were closed on my "photo day", but I have some better photos in my other Old Sana'a travelogue...the downside is that I'm also in the pictures!
A few days before 'Eid, Osama and I had visited a different stall looking to buy a few spices for my Mum...I really did not know what the spices on offer were or how to use them...and I still don't! I bought saffron, cumin, za'atar, coriander (I think...that is what the dictionary seems to think it is, but I have my doubts!) and fenugreek (hulba), so if anyone has any recipes using these spices, my Mum would love to know!

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Bab as-Sabah

One of my friends, upon seeing this picture, asked me "was there an earthquake?". The rubble is not caused by an earthquake, but by a rather stupid "cultural preservation" project. A few years ago, Bab as-Sabah was tarmacked...not the most authentic road surface which could have been chosen, but as it was paid for by one cultural organization no one was complaining...and besides, it was easier on the taxis than the previous mud ground. Then, a little after all that chaos, a second organization donated money for the tarmac to be ripped up, and for it to be paved with cobbles. This was not so good for vehicles, but from a tourist's perspective, it probably looked more authentic. So at great expense, to both the organizations and the street traders whose business was disrupted by the upheaval, the road was ripped up twice. Now it is being ripped up again, and left with mud as this has been dicided by another cultural organization to be the most authentic of all road-pavings.
So much money has been spent on paving and ripping up this particular stretch of road, and there are so many projects which badly need this sort of money, like providing schools with books, paper and pens, training local teachers to teach the children rather than sub-standard foreign teachers who only work in yemen because they can't get a job teaching in their own country, providing hospitals with better facilities....the list could go on and on, but obviously this road's paving is much more important, even though the people whose lives it affects (street traders, inhabitants of the local area, minibus drivers, and shoppers) couldn't really give a damn what the road is paved with.