Bakdash in Amman
Simply Sunday. You get more out of any travel experience, says the gal, if you go where long-time locals go on a Sunday. This includes cycling in São Paulo‘s Parque do Ibirapuera, past the Oscar Niemeyer building. It is also fun to hang-out with recent-locals, say heading for Hong Kong Island’s area around the Mandarin Oriental hotel, which becomes Little Manila every Sunday – Filipinas, and some Filipinos, many hundred of them, congregate there to meet friends, swop stories, set up one-day restaurants and hair-do salons and much more.
New on this scene is the Syrian expat eating heaven in Amman, Jordan. Bakdash icecream has been a feature of Damascus life since 1885. Now, with the ghastly Syrian troubles, Yarob Ababneh has set up Bakdash in Amman’s Al-Madienah Al-Mounawara Street beside Ibn Al Haitham Hospital – under 15 minutes’ walk from Four Seasons Hotel Amman. Syrians, and others, are flocking for the icecream, made in Damascus and amazingly, and bravely, taken through the border as blocks of booza (mastic resin and sahlab) in refrigerated trucks. Blocks are hammered in the restaurant, and served covered with pistachios. Watch the results on Facebook.
