Dinner and an outing

I can't sleep. For a number of reasons really. I had a 4 hour nap this afternoon after coming back from our trip out of the city, and so just don't feel tired. There is also a lot of noise outside with aircraft and not the civilian kind either. I got up early this morning as four of us were heading out of the city. Before we had even started however, one of the four dropped out due to potential stomach issues - you don't want to mess with that when you don't know where the next toilet will be. The remaining three of us piled into the car and headed out. It probably took us nearly an hour to get to a sign that told us we were leaving the city. Mountains towered before us and we hit the countryside. It is amazing the change in scenery and just how much greener everything looked as we left the city behind, soon we turned off the main road and head up the hills to our destination, we tried to go up the main road but they were rebuilding so we had to take the side roads which involved lots of winding bendy roads full of stones and bumps and several reversing back the way we had come in order to take a different turning. It was quite an experience. We went along to an old derelict house that used to belong to the old king and sits on top of a hill which gave us a great view, then we head to the bazaar where there was a number of shops selling pottery...something this area is famous for, and which they have only started doing again in the last few years. After doing a little shopping we headed back down to the city and lunch in a local restaurant with local people that our driver took us to. It was quite a contrast to dinner last night. Dinner last night was both interesting, comfortable and quite disconcerting. We had to dress up in our gladdest rags and finery and then cover it all up as we took the taxi over. We got there earlier than we needed to so headed downstairs to the bar area. At first it seemed like no one else was around and we got a little worried that there would be hardly anybody at dinner, but soon people started arriving and they were dressed as fancy as we were which brought no end of relief. Finally at 8pm we headed upstairs for dinner. We sat with a number of different people all with very interesting jobs and even stricter security policies in place, but somehow we had all managed to convince our security guys that we would be ok and we had all made it out. It's a strange place this town, dinner last night would not have been at all out of place in Whitehall or D.C and yet today's trip out of the city brought back the reality of what everyday people are living in. It's a strange country but one I am growing to love.