And So It Began

As I'll try and demonstrate later. somehow, the old city of San'a is a confusing maze of streets, shops, mosques and squares.  Considering that San'a is often considered to be the oldest city in the world, this shouldn't be all that surprising.  According to legend it was founded by Noah's son Shem.  At the very least it is thousands of years old.  It's much like the old medina in Fez, Morocco, except arguably more convoluted, mainly because the buildings are tall enough to block your line of sight.  One of the reasons why I had chosen the Burj Al Salam (which is a first rate hotel, by the way) is that it is the tallest building in the old city, and thus I thought it might be easy to spot (yes, I'm just that naive).  Actually, the maze-like quality of the place is quite liberating because there's no pressure to remember your way - you can't remember your way (unless you're born there, I suspect).  So you just march off into the maze and know that you'll be magnificently lost in five minutes (at most).  I just picked out an old gentleman (pictured below) and followed where he led me.  I figured this was as good an approach as any.