Our Hotel

We have been at the Hanania Hotel for over a week now and loving it. The hotel is just inside the east gate of the old city, down a cobblestone alley lined with small shops and an even smaller alley to its front door. Like most of the restaurants in the old city, our hotel is a converted home built around an open courtyard. There is a narrow entrance way that opens into a marble plaza with tables. In better weather, breakfast is served there. The rooms (nine total) hang precariously over the courtyard, reached by steep stone steps and balconies. Everything seems made from stone, even the insets for holding artwork. There is art everywhere. Our small room has five pieces of original art as well as a vase that must be a couple of hundred years old in what can only be described as a ‘shrine.’

The room is twice the size of a good cruise ship room, but gives us plenty of room. The walls are stucco, the framing heavy wood, open beam ceiling and heated marble floors. The bathroom is wonderfully appointed with rain shower and plenty of hot water. The most incongruous piece of furniture in the room is the 40” LG flat screen TV. That and the fact we have wireless internet.

There is no restaurant at the hotel, but they do serve breakfast. Each morning, we work our way down a narrow flight of stairs to what must have been a storeroom with arched stone walls and ceiling. Breakfast includes juice, coffee, rolls, yogurt, olives, cheese and hard-boiled eggs. The young man who serves is so nice as are all the people working here. We dropped off laundry yesterday morning, expecting it may take a day or two, but it was returned neatly folded last night. The people who run the place seem very relaxed, but they are also extremely efficient.

Even though we are in the middle of a sea of houses, it is surprisingly quiet in our room except for the occasional vendor hawking wares. The first day we passed through the alley, all the shop owners wanted us to come in. When we told them we were here to teach Syrian teachers and media people, they immediately dropped their ‘sales mode’. Now they just wave and smile as we pass.