A Red Rug at The Blue Souk

My boss Diane took a few of us to the Blue Souk, (or Central Market or Central Souq-- GPS goes with Central Market) in Sharjah last weekend. I wasn't thinking I needed a rug, but when I got there and saw these beauties I decided I really needed a rug! This experience for me is "a gateway rug" because I plan to go back and buy more sometime. This is the one I settled on, I love red. It was handwoven in Afghanistan and was a really fair price. It is good quality, made of camel wool, and very soft. Although I don't have a photo of the backside, it is also a very neat pattern.

They send you out the door with a small bag, but that is magic, they manage to get even large rugs into little shopping bags.

I want to show a few photos of the Blue Souk itself, it is a really pretty building, it seems to represent the beginning of the huge marketplace culture that exists in Dubai today.

The kids had a blast running around the shop, crawling behind the rugs and playing hide and go seek. It looked like a lot of fun. In the photo below is Mara and Brian's daughter, she was still for a moment and let me snap a picture of her. Rafeek is in the foreground, if you look to the light in the background, there is a little girl there.

Rafeek is an excellent salesman and showed us all the variety of quality, patterns and colors that we were all looking for. He served us tea and had impeccable stock. There are other rug vendors in this huge older shopping place (souk) but there was plenty to choose from in this shop and it was nice to have an appointment to see him, he was expecting us. Here are some photos I took during our shopping experience. The last photo is a beautiful rug that is my favorite, and is about $45,000.

End of blog post, but not the end of my rug shopping.