Destination: Middle East
Where’s the World’s Largest Restaurant?
by Jim Benning | 06.04.08 | 12:03 PM ET
In a suburb of Damascus, Syria, of all places. “The 6,012-seat Damascus Gate has taken the accolade from a Bangkok eatery serving a mere 5,000 diners,” the BBC reports. According to the article, the restaurant “has a huge open air area complete with pools, fountains and replicas of archaeological ruins for the summer, and separate themed areas for Chinese and Indian cuisine.”
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Yahoo! BuzzCelebrity Travel Watch: Chris de Burgh in Iran
by Michael Yessis | 05.30.08 | 2:09 PM ET
Chris who? You probably know his syrupy song “The Lady in Red.” (Video below.) It was huge in the mid-‘80s. Turns out the British singer is still huge in Iran, where, for almost three decades, most Western music has been forbidden by the ruling Shiite Muslim clergy. De Burgh’s songs circulated on illegally copied tapes there, and he became rock-star popular. So much so that, in an apparent lifting of the Western music ban, de Burgh recently became the first Western pop musician to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Rick Steves Blogs From Iran
by Jim Benning | 05.21.08 | 1:52 PM ET
He’s there to produce a TV show about travel in the country—and he’s on something of a mission. As he explained on the blog a couple of days ago:
Checkpoint Travel 101 in Israel
by Julia Ross | 05.20.08 | 2:33 PM ET
I’ve had an eye-opening tutorial in travel through military checkpoints in the West Bank this month, getting turned away at one for not having the proper documentation, then getting barked at by Israeli soldiers at various others. I came across this surreal sign posted by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism at the checkpoint near Bethlehem. The checkpoint is covered with barbed wire and feels like an armed camp.
First Women-Only Hotel Opens in Saudi Arabia
by Eva Holland | 05.19.08 | 12:07 PM ET
In January, we wrote that Saudi Arabia had lifted restrictions on women staying alone in hotels; previously, women had been required to stay with, or to carry a letter of permission from, a male “guardian.” So what’s come of it? The change has opened the way for a new niche hotel: the Luthan Hotel & Spa, which the executive director boasts is “women-owned, women-managed, and women-run.” But as the Christian Science Monitor’s Caryle Murphy asks, is this a sign of progress or of deepening gender segregation?
The Call to Prayer: ‘An Audible Pinprick to Your Conscience’
by Julia Ross | 05.14.08 | 12:56 PM ET
Riding the Rails in Iran and Beyond
by Jim Benning | 05.06.08 | 4:37 PM ET
Interesting bit in a Guardian story about train travel in Iran: “Scheduled for completion later this year is a line that will run from Kerman in the south-east to Quetta across the Pakistani border. When finished, it will present a mouth-watering prospect: uninterrupted rail travel from Europe to the subcontinent.”
A Carbon-Free ‘Green City’ in the Desert?
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.06.08 | 10:42 AM ET
If the excesses of Dubai aren’t your thing, you might soon consider a very different kind of travel destination in the United Arab Emirates. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi is planning to build an “eco city” for 50,000 people that will be powered entirely by renewable energy, NPR reports.
Damascus Becomes Haven for Westerners Learning Arabic
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.17.08 | 10:53 AM ET
American and European students who love the cheap tuition for Arabic classes and the purity of the dialect (it’s close to classical Arabic) have been going to Syria’s capital for years. But in the latest report on the trend, NPR notes that the community of young language students from the West are also stepping out of the usual expat and study-abroad bubble. Looks like they’re at least taking time to discover a complex, restless and intriguing country often reduced to caricature as a member of an extended Axis of Evil.
Photo by James Gordon via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Iran Hearts America (in Private)
by Joanna Kakissis | 02.14.08 | 3:33 PM ET
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may denounce the U.S. as the “Great Satan,” but we all know that most Iranians are welcoming to American travelers and are curious and open-minded about American culture, right? Lest anyone forget, a couple of recent articles highlight the point.
U.S. Woman Arrested in Saudi Arabia Starbucks
by Jim Benning | 02.07.08 | 2:51 PM ET
Her “crime,” according to the Times of London: sitting with a man who was not her husband. She was hauled away by a member of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The woman works for a company in Saudi Arabia and visited the Starbucks with male colleagues to use the Internet after their Riyadh office suffered an outage.
Kibbe and Myth in the Mississippi Delta
by Joanna Kakissis | 02.07.08 | 11:06 AM ET
If you go to any family-run diner in the Mississippi Delta, chances are you’ll find tabouleh, dolmas and the Lebanese meat dish called kibbe tucked between the barbecue and fried chicken on the menu. That’s because waves of Lebanese settled in Mississippi between the 1870s and 1960s, setting up grocery stores and restaurants to make a living, according to NPR’s Kitchen Sisters and “the Faulkner of Southern food,” John T. Edge.
The Road to Happiness
by World Hum | 01.29.08 | 11:41 AM ET
Frank Bures gets lost in Eric Weiner's "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Place in the World"
In Dubai, a Little Lyon in the Desert?
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.29.08 | 7:07 AM ET
Ah, what love (and oil money) can do. They’re fueling the so-called “Lyon-Dubai City” project, which aims to create a mini version of France’s third-largest city in the desert of the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Women Now Free to Stay Alone in Hotels
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.08 | 11:02 AM ET
Facing criticism for its restrictions on women, the Saudi Arabian government said this week that individual Saudi women no longer need a male guardian to stay in a hotel or a furnished apartment within the Kingdom. However, hotels must send information about the traveler to local police, according to the AP.