A souk is a market, but in very different sense than market as we can conceive of the world in the U.S. A typical souk is a very (sometimes very, very, very) long alley with stalls on each side where merchants sell their wares. I had a souk near my dorm in Tunis, and it began with a hardware section, then bread and cakes, trinkets, fruit, meat, and sweets. Then you walked through a plaza area to continue along your way to find clothing, plates, and just about anything you wanted. There was no English, no price tags, and no apparent logic to its organization, but I loved going to the souk.
One of the stops on our tour to Tripoli was the Khan al-Saboun, a world famous soap-maker. We didn't stay at the shop for long, but we got a chance to smell a lot of different soaps and read their creative grammar:
Sorry, I spend a large portion of my days getting laughed at on the street when I open my mouth and speak Arabic so I couldn't resist that picture. There was also a Quran made out of soap:
Next up: the Cedars. The pharaohs used them to build support structures for their pyramids. They used to cover almost all of Lebanon. And most importantly they are a blog entry not to be missed.
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