A Walk Through History

One day this week, we had to make a visit to the embassy to renew Sarah Claire's passport, so we decided that since we were already going to be out and about, we would make a field trip day out of it. When we finished up our embassy appointment, we grabbed a taxi and headed over to a neat historical area of the city.

There's an old market area that has been around since the 1300s that is still very active with all kinds of stuff for sale, so our first stop was at our friend Mustafa's beautiful glasswares shop. I had something in mind for a piece of our bedroom decor, and knew that Mustafa's shop was just the place to find it. His store is full of gorgeous (and cheap!) glasswares, like perfume bottles, drinking glasses, decorative pieces, and tons of Christmas ornaments. With some trepidation, we took all three kids inside the store and let them help me look around for the right pieces. I was pretty nervous the whole time, but we found what we were looking for and made it out of the store without any broken glass!

That was the only shopping I needed to do, so after that we walked through the market area to a street just on the other side of it that dates back even further than the market area. This street was the main street of our city about a thousand years ago, and because it led to the palace, was the site of fabulous parades and processions. The kids had fun picturing the "Prince Ali" parade from Aladdin as we walked down the street.

There are some really impressive old buildings lining the street, so we admired them and heard some neat stories from our tour guide (a.k.a. Daddy) about how they came to be. He may have taken a tour group or ten down this street in the past.

The kids did great, but weren't really up for hours of touring, so after a brief walk down the main street, we turned around and headed back. It was a fun outing, and we ended it with lunch at a place that's a little newer to our ancient city--Auntie Anne's pretzels. We love this city and its crazy mix of old and new!