Al-Faw Palace

Al-Faw Palace is where I worked for the first six months of my time here; it's a pretty impressive building, so here are some more pictures of it.

Here it is from a distance, and at night:

This is what you see on the walking towards:

Here is the enormous front door:

This is the rotunda you enter when you walk inside, with a huge chandelier hanging above:

This is what it looks like set up for a ceremony, with the huge American flag draped from the ceiling: Here is the detail you see in all of the many ceilings:

There are many additional chandeliers, above the spiral staircases and in the hallways:

There are many restrooms, here is what they generally look like. Certainly a step above "Port-o-Jons":

There's even a swimming pool, unfortunately it is not filled:

Out front there is a guard tower that has seen some action in the past:

This chair and preposterously oversized tea pot were a gift to Saddam Hussein from Yasser Arafat.
And a palace tour is not complete without the "Saddam Bass," these greedy fish stay in the same spot on the way up to the entrance 24/7, because everyone feeds them. They are enormous, some are several feet long. One time after a conference we fed the fish the extra footlong sandwiches that were going to the garbage anyway and 40 entire sandwiches were completely devoured in less than five minutes.