{"id":45,"date":"2008-06-15T20:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T20:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2008-06-15T20:27:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-15T20:27:00","slug":"saying-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Saying goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m down to one more full day here. Tomorrow is my last day to do anything in Yemen, and I think I’ll be busy. I have two people coming over to look at my stuff in the apartment. I will make sure everything is sold, someone is going to get one hell of a deal on a fridge, stovetop, mafraj cushions, and a washing machine. I don’t really care what I get, it was never going to be a large amount of money, but every little bit helps now…<\/p>\n

I went with Luchiano and Laurie the other day to a really good restaurant. It’s called Al-Faker and it serves traditional Yemeni food. Yes, I have been constantly bitching about the food here, but that is because I was going to restaurants. If you want good Yemeni food, you have to go to someone’s home, and while the food is good, there are other problems (see here<\/a>). This restaurant has the good food and a good atmosphere. It’s what dining out should be like. For those of you used to old city prices, the prices at Al-Faker will come as a shock. On the upside, you don’t have to worry about food poisoning, women can go there, and it’s actually a nice place to be. It is, of course, way the hell down Hadda street. Every place that is worth going to is… This place is a little past Pizziola on the left…<\/p>\n

We went there for lunch and then Luciano invited me over to one of his co-worker’s houses. I think his name was Alonzo, but whatever his name, he was a very gracious host. He lives in a part of Sana’a that I had never gone to before. The houses were all inside walled compounds. If the house I went into was any indication, the houses are really nice. The neighborhood itself is typical Yemen, rubble and trash everywhere. It’s just one brown, dirty, heap of rubble after another.<\/p>\n

In any case, this house had a great big garden lined with pomegranate trees. He has a lawn and numerous flowers. I was shocked to see so much green, it was quite nice. The first thing that the host did was offer coffee, chocolate, and cognac. I’m not a coffee drinker, but what could I say when he brought out a bottle of Remy Martin VSOP and offered it me? It was quite nice, very smooth. I mentioned that I felt a little guilty drinking such expensive liquor belonging to someone I just met. He just waved his arm dismissively and said that it didn’t cost more than 60-80 Euros in the duty free… I’d hate to see what he thought an expensive bottle would cost. This was the first time I had ever drank cognac in the daytime, it felt quite extravagent. I had had chocolate with cognac before, but only with my cheap covousier, the combination was a little harsh. This combo was divine. If I ever have the money, I will buy a bottle of that stuff for myself.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Luchiano and Laurie invited me over to dinner in a couple of nights. I just got back. It was the typical gorging myself on prosciutto and great pasta. Those guys are great, and I demanded that they come over to the US so that I could repay their hospitality. There really aren’t many people here to say goodbye to, but I needed to see them again before I left. Thank you guys, I miss you already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m down to one more full day here. Tomorrow is my last day to do anything in Yemen, and I think I’ll be busy. I have two people coming over to look at my stuff in the apartment. I will make sure everything is sold, someone is going to get one hell of a deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yemen"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}