Anyway, I can’t quite remember what I did there since I’m sure I didn’t do a whole lot. I saw a few museums, especially memorable were the Sergei Parajanov museum, which was in memory of the Soviet Armenian avant-garde film-maker. I also saw the State Art Gallery, which was very funny. About 100 attendants in each room gossiping and playing music whilst old artworks fell off walls. Lot’s of marble and chandeliers though. I also saw the very cool Arshile Gorky museum, who was an Abstract Impressionist, and rather good, in a huge, ancient house.

The rest of the time I spent wandering around, going to a park which was closed but also quite scary, seeing the Opera House and eating. I have never eaten so well since the guys at the hostel had what bordered on an obsession with khorovatz, which is an Armenian meat dish that comes in many varieties and is really nice if also very meaty. I ended up seeing some bands too, two pretty good jazz bands, although apparently I missed the best jazz club because it was only open one night a week when I wasn’t there.

There are a whole lot of new buildings in Yerevan and the footpaths were clean, and surprise, after such a long time, the traffic wasn’t completely out of control! I hope they keep up some of the wonderful old buildings that are still there, especially some of the early Soviet buildings (also here) which are grand and cool too.

Anyway, I managed to leave Yerevan and take a bus to Byurakan to stay with the family of one of the hostel staff who was very accomodating. I stayed for one night and it was great to see an Armenian village. I got off the bus finally figuring out where I was supposed to get out. It was a small village square with a shop and a few backgammon boards and a running tap stream thing that said 1952. It started to snow and a Lada drove by. Finally  a friend of a cousin of the family took me along the road to their house, which has a huge sloping backyard to the cliff that overlooked the river. The town itself is famous for its very old church and a large Soviet observatory.

If I’d eaten well in Yerevan, I ate even more in Byurakan. Some of the most delicious things were put in front of me, and being full was no excuse, at least to them, to not eat. I fell asleep near the stove that night after a long, broken conversation with some other family members who were visiting from Yerevan for the night. In the morning I went to the observatory and back to Yerevan. The last night I was there an Australian-Armenian I met and someone from the hostel took me out to eat khash, which is a famous Armenian stew, and it was good.

Then home. Hope you enjoyed reading.

The view across Yerevan to the Opera House from Mother Armenia statue.

Basically everything is still in Russian, although that is changing in the capital now.

It’s winter so the park has been packed away, so to speak.

Soviet bathrooms look fun.

More amusement rides. A policeman asked me what I was doing taking photos of this. I don’t think he understood the humour.

When Stalin’s statue was pulled down it crushed two people. He killed from beyond the grave goes the joke. Now it’s Mother Armenia.

The snow in Yerevan after I saw the Scripts Museum.

The central train station.

The village of Byurakan.

The view from the backyard of the house I stayed in.

The magnificent reminders of a generation of Soviet landscape designers.

Siwa was a wonderful place. It is the smallest of the desert Oasis’ near the Libyan border, a small town with no cars, only donkeys, with no people, only date groves. The traditional Siwan house is made of mud-brock, and the town is spread around several small hot-springs. We arrived by the most tortourous bus trip I had ever been on, going down a narrow desert highway for hours and hours and hours. We stopped once at a small shop about four hours between towns that sold some basic food, but was inexplicably covered in christmas lights. When we arrived in Siwa, the guy we were staying with arrived on his motorbike at the bus-station, which was not more than a seat under a covering. He sent us back to his hotel with donkeys that took ages to get through the little town. The town is very cool, mainly just small huts in between date groves and little hot-springs. Unfortunately I think some others have started to realise this and there will soon be a largish development just outside, which is a shame.

Nevertheless, we left the next day and took a long detour track to walk to the various hot-springs, one of which we bathed in, and ate at this guys restaurant which was great. He made Lee special vegetarian food after telling her off (if memory serves me well…) We walked around the mud-covered citadel as well, which was grand, and some form of temple. The main attraction was the wonderful weather and the amazing scenery. The second day we got a 4WD to take us out into the desert. We hadn’t realised that it was going to be incredibly hilly, with the 4WD struggling to make it up and down the sand-dunes (and it did have a cracked windshield which didn’t make us feel any better). It took us to a small pond and hot-spring, which was very cool, then to another, for tea. Another thing about the desert was that some of the sand was white and some of it was dark, so the effect was very weird, some of it looking so much like I’d imagine Mars.

Back in Alexandria, I was ill for a few days so I missed much of it, but we stayed at the phenomenal Crillion Hotel, which was a run-down place in the middle of town, but the people were so nice, and the furniture out of the sixties and their food, which I can still taste as that’s all I ate for about three days. Otherwise, Alexandria was full of coffee shops, which we visited, and a long seaside walk. We visited the aquarium, which was dismal, so Lee complained and then we referred it to our zoologist friend in Cairo, and we visited an expensive restaurant for Morgan’s birthday. It was apparently the best restaurant in town, with pictures of various dignitaries (Yasser Arafat anyone) dining in its hallowed halls. We ate for $20 each.

Another highlight in Alexandria was a fish restaurant that was suggested to us, but which turned out to be impossible to find. We took two cabs and walked in circles till we noticed it was actually in an alley. They cook up pippies, scallops, fish, rice, prawns, and anything else seafood related and heap it onto your plate for next to nothing. Then we were seated upstairs in probably the most squalid room I’d ever been in, but it tasted a treat. We told them we’d come back because they were very excited to see us, but unfortunately we weren’t able to find it again.

Anyway enough of my rambling. I will add the Armenia post next (probably in November…)

Siwa Oasis, ain’t it pretty…

Some of the houses where we got lost.

The town butcher. I just thought this was very cool.

The sand dunes in the desert.

One of the places out in the desert we went to.

Alexandria’s main drive up the coast.

The boats in the harbour.

I also forgot to mention we had a wonderful afternoon with an Armenian couple in Alexandria who took us to the Armenian club and fed us. It was a really nice villa, and it was nice to be amongst Armenians for a little while (nationalism).

The first few days we spent doing some very touristy but worthwhile things. We visited the Pyramids, which were nice, and we were chased around by a thousand camel sellers trying to get us to ride around the carpark on their camel. Morgan bought a paperweight pyramid that doubled as a pen holder and was a snow-globe with the snow replaced by shiny gold glitter. It was a stunning work. Next we went to the Egyptian Museum, where the actual museum is as much an attraction as the displays. It seems to be a huge storehouse, everything dumped atop each other even though we’re talking about 3000 year old mummies and the like. The room with Tutenkahmen was really cool, as everything was made of gold. I ran out of patience after a few hours and left to go to the American University of Cairo, where they wouldn’t let you in if you were not a student.

We also met a wonderful friend of our family there, Kohar, and her two daughters, who took all four of us to Islamic Cairo one evening. We spent a lot of time walking through the market and then past the old courtyard houses in the area, till we got tired and sat down at Fishawi’s, which is a famous ahwa (pipe-smoking and coffee drinking) place. The next day we left to go to Aswan. Getting a ticket for the train was absolute hell in Egypt; no-one actually wants to sell it to you, and you are told to come back later, or that it isn’t for sale, or to buy it on the train, or that we should have bought it before, all while fifty people try to barge in front of you in the queue. Finally something gives and you start yelling and they produce the tickets. Unfortunately for us, the idiot train guards decided to put all the tourists (who can’t sit with the Egyptians) into a second or third class compartment although we had all paid for first class at a hugely inflated price from what the Egyptians pay (but still came to about $12.)

Aswan was fantastic. It’s basically in the south of Egypt near Sudan, and sits on the Nile. The main attractions are the felucca’s, sail boats that go up and down the river as far as Sudan and Luxor. We were there for a few days and managed to take a few trips, first to the Botanical Garden built by Lord Kitchener (I think) on a small island in the middle of the river, and then up the river for three hours lazing around in the sun and walking on the uninhabited bank. There are some large banana and mango plantations there, and sometimes people take animals to feed there, but its far less populated than Aswan, and much prettier. It’s hard to explain Aswan’s appeal, since the food was awful, the train there and back was long and painful, and the hostel wasn’t exactly nice. See pictures below.

Finally we made it back onto the train (same ordeal as before, but it helped that the guy working in our hostel was station-master on his days off) and up to Alexandria.

Cairo also had some interesting cinemas around the town.

Some of the fading, grey buildings. This one isn’t that old.

The main square in downtown, Midan Harb, with Groppi Patisserie (and their meringues) in the background.

The Egyptian Museum, restored on the outside, not on the inside…

Our lovely room at the Pension Roma, wood panelling and all.

The Pyramids. The big one.

The Sphinx. Not as big as you think.

Aswan’s loveliness in pictorial form. This is from the Botanical Gardens.

Oh so nice, shame about the train trip.

A picture taken from the felucca.

The other bank (but for some reason the boats remind me of Huckleberry Finn.)

The last picture of Aswan, where we had a little walk and were followed by a kid trying to give us a donkey ride.

Tel Aviv was one of the best places we went, and my favourite city (or maybe Beirut, I can’t decide). The whole city is very low, and has heaps of amazing Bauhaus sytyle apartments at various stages of disrepair, along with large green parks and beaches, plus the food was delicious and we were staying near some hilarious Russian cafes, whose clientele provided us with a lot of amusement.

We wandered around for a few days to see some of the more famous streets with the Bauhaus architecture, and saw a number of galleries (since it had been a while since we’d done that), one of which had a weird exibition centred around the watermelon. We spent a lot of time eating bagels and we also had the opportunity to cook for ourselves as well. Travers cooked for everyone the first night, and the second night Morgan and I managed to make the largest quantity of tomato and basil and a whole bunch of other random things made into a stew thing with fried eggs (and it tasted a whole lot better than it sounds, oh and there was some sausage from a funny deli in the Carmel markets).

After Tel Aviv we decided to go to Haifa for a few days. Haifa is a city in the north on the coast, without a huge deal to do there but an old German Colony and an enormous Bahai Garden. We went to the Bahai Garden but we missed the only English tour of the day so we took the Hebrew one, since you can’t get in without doing a tour. We didn’t understand anything but it was a nice garden. There was also a large district of just Russians which I visited and it was quite amusing, but it was shabbat so the entire country shuts down and there is very little to actually do.

Before heading to Jerusalem we went back through Tel Aviv to get an Egyptian visa for later in the trip. Although we had called before and confirmed they were open that day, when we arrived, it went a little something like this (it was just after 1pm):

Us: “We are here for the visa.”
Stupid Egyptian: “Oh, we don’t open till 12pm.”
Us: “But it’s past 12pm.”
Stupid Egyptian: “Oh, well we don’t open today till 1pm.”
Us: “It’s now 1.15pm.”
Stupid Egyptian: “Well you’ll have to come back tomorrow. We can only give visa between 8am and 11am.”
Us: “You told us to come today, and we are in Jerusalem tomorrow.”
At this point the door opens and the man who is actually SITTING at the visa desk comes out.
Stupid Egyptian: “We can’t do it now, the man isn’t here.”
Us: “Why can’t you just put the visa in our passports.”
Stupid Egyptian: “No, No, No. Tomorrow.”
Goes inside and locks the door.

So we ended up going across the road and getting an Egytian tour company to sponsor us and take us direct from Jerusalem to Cairo on the bus from hell (14 hours I think.)

Anyway, we did make it to Jerusalem where we stayed in the Old City. It wasn’t the most exciting place, as the Jewish and Armenian quarters were largely behind walls and the Christian and Muslim quarters just sold pointless garbage to souveniers. However, we did see the wailing wall (and yes it’sjust a boring wall) and the Dome of the Rock (which you can’t go inside unless you are Muslim).

The best part of Jerusalem was we met some interesting Americans in the hostel and we went to a good soup kitchen in the New City. There was also the Knesset, the Israeli parliament which was an interesting building but we couldn’t get more than 500 metres close to it as there was a huge security wall, and the Israel Museum which sounded amazing, but wait for it, was closed, and they didn’t even tell us even though we had been there that day wasting time. We actually ended up going back to Tel Aviv for a day (since its only an hour or so away) and visiting some glasswork museum and eating more…

We left Jerusalem early in the morning and took our bus down to Taba in Egypt to swap buses and travel onto Cairo.

One of the nicer Bauhaus buildings on Rothschild Avenue.

More of the same, but on Bialik Street, which was all completely restored and amazing.

And more…

And here is a synagogue, look how nice the weather is.

These are the gardens at Haifa. There are six (I think) tiers of gardens all perfectly symetrical.

Of course I enjoyed the cactus garden at the bottom the most.

The amazing mosaic on the Dome of the Rock.

And here is the whole thing plus well positioned street light.

I forgot to mention we went to Jaffa which is the old part of Tel Aviv (and was there before Tel Aviv.) I bought some old calendar machine and we had shakshuka (which is so good that I think you should learn how to make it mum). There was also an abandoned acquarium on the way which was nice.

There was  really big park in Jaffa and a wishing bridge (not sure how it works…)

The wall near the acquarium.

(I did manage to talk my way into having a look at the Armenian Church in Jerusalem quickly).

Petra itself though was fantastic. After battling through the ticket gate, where we had to pay nearly $45AUD (!!!!) because the idiotic Jordanian government decided that we had to do the tour and horse-ride (and we had no choice on the matter), we finally left on horseback, afer which the guide wanted a tip for the horse we had no choice in taking and wouldn’t take anything less than $10 (so he got $2, as if some useless horse guide can outsmart us…)

The guide was awful, he continued to play Indiana Jones theme song on his phone whilst blabbing on about how his in-laws had done this or that so we ran away and wandered about the ruins ourselves which was much nicer. Morgan and Lee were accosted by some hilariously small girl who demanded food and would only leave after Morgan gave her a one month old candy from Istanbul. The ruins themselves were really damn cool and they glowed red near sunset. They were carved into the rock and some of the rock patterns were naturally cool in themselves so it was nice to see and all.

After a night there we left in the morning to go to Wadi Rum. Wadi Rum was definaltely one of the highlights of our trip. It’s a Bedouin camp in the middle of the desert. We arrived (we stayed with Mohammad Mutlak I think he called it the Sunset Camp) into Rum village and left in a 4WD to go around the desert area there are see different things. We saw a fresh spring, some large natural bridges, we ran around in sand dunes and finally just before sunset got to the camp. They had no electricity there so after seeing the sunset we went to the big tent and sat around the fire drinking tea and eating. We stole a bunch of candles to light our tent and played cards till we thought it was late enough to sleep (but it was actually like 7pm). The next day we went back and waited for a taxi to Israel and found out the American help there was actually evading tax back home and was engaged to one of the Bedouin men at the camp.

We finally got the cab and waited hours and hours at the damn border but that’s another story…

Petra’s most famous sight…

Morgan, Lee and the annoying little girl who could speak Italian and Spanish to ask for money.

Some of the rock formations and colouring was kind of cool.

Wadi Rum, near Rum village.

Cute little goats in the spring. Awwwwwwwwwww.

More of the desert around Wadi Rum…

And more, but it’s so damn pretty.

On the first day I went to see a disappointing modern art gallery, and then spent the day walking through a souq and eating… Jordan has a lot of ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘healthy-organic-lite’ restaurants for some reason, so the prices are high, but the food is quite good (much better than Damascus that’s for sure). There was also a falafel place near Cinema al-Hussein where we were staying, I can’t remember the name but I was told it was quite famous for some of the best falafel’s ever, which they were. They were probably the best thing I ate in Jordan and it only cost me 350 fils which is like 50 cents.

The day after that we went again to another ‘organic-eco-happy-smiles-rainbows’ place which doubled as a bookshop (surprise), then to the Jordanian kings Royal Automobile Museum which was really, really cool. The entire family is obsessed with cars so they have hundreds of them for show. We heard some meowing coming from a 1930′s Aston Martin and there was a little crowd seeing if there was a cat or something so we asked and apparently it liked that car and they kept getting rid of it and it kept coming back in, so they had put a box with chicken in it to get him out…

Anyway the third day was New Years Eve so we decided to see a movie at the Cinema al-Hussein building which was one of the more interesting things we did since it was largely unchanged from the 50′s (?) and completely run down, with one old man who just put on whatever copied DVD he wanted to watch so there was no timetable, you just walked up and asked and he’d tell you maybe to come back in a bit and he’d put something on. It was a huge cinema and there were about 4 people with us watching James Bond…

Finally for NYE we went to a fish restaurant that turned out to be surprisingly good, and they bought us two whole fish and lots of rice (like a small mountain) and just the most ridiculous amount of salad so we sat through it for about 3 hours.

The next day we went to the Dana Nature Reserve, which was a longish drive out of the city, to Dana Village. We only stayed one night and did a very long hike up and down a huge valley, but it was really beautiful and nice to get out of cities for once. We stayed in the village which had a bunch of cooperative hotels run by the locals with big communal dining halls and really good views. (See pictures, better description…)

We left after a long hike and took a cab to Petra, where our hostel had ‘accidentally double booked’ our room and we had to go to their friends hostel which was awful so we left quickly and found someplace else, but more on that later.

Some more Beirut photos, here is the waterfront which also featured a Luna Park and these fishers.

Downtown Amman where we stayed.

The souq, just like Aleppo, Damascus, Hama etc etc

One of the King’s cooler cars, it was a 1930′s prototype big with celebrities but the company that made it went broke soon after, can’t remember the exact name.

Dana Village and Valley, from our hostel roof.

Crappy photo of the sunset at same location.

Dana Valley from somewhere within the actual reserve. It was full of small springs and oasis areas, like this one below…

One of the best little oasis areas, which was leafy and green in the middle of the valley.

I wanted to put up some photos of our Christmas Day feast but the computer won’t allow it, so I’ll try again next time I post… We’re in Jerusalem now, leaving for Cairo in two days.

The next day I walked about the area some more. I was trying to find some museums or art galleries but the ones I knew about were closed/under comstruction etc so I wandered Gemmayzeh and Achrafiye which is a similar place close by past all the colonial era mansions and the hundreds of cranes building more new apartment blocks which to my relief weren’t hideous like they are in Sydney.

The next day we visited Downtown, where the whole city has been reconstructed after the civil war. It’s a bit eerie because no cars are aloud in and the military is patroling everything, which is different to Beirut because there are cars everywhere (it’s Mercedes central) and they don’t follow traffic signals and are probably the worst drivers ever. Ever. We also saw the Holiday Inn which was just built by the time of the civil war and was then used as a sniper position so the whole building is riddled with bullets but the structure is still standing.

After that we went to Ras Beirut and Hamra, where there is the enormous American University of Beirut, which was pleasant to walk thr0ugh and see the students and all the stuff on. They have a campus newspaper which is even worse than UTS… That area was rather nice, some student housing and shops etc etc.

We really saw Beirut through our stomachs though. After the gnocci, Lee and I had sushi a few days after (where the Japanese owner was teaching a Lebanese lady how to eat with chopsticks), I had stuffed chicken in a traditional Lebanese style, and on Christmas Eve we decided to do something that was special and involved a lot of money so we all went to Al Dente. Al Dente is one of the most expensive restaurants in Beirut and we dined on Onion Soup (delicious) and I had thin slices of veal on polenta cakes and the richest chocolate souffle ever.

On Christmas Day we went to a large park and feasted (again) on a picnic we bought at several deli’s: cheeses, slices of prosuito (or however it’s spelt I don’t care), pate, fruits, breads, other deli goods like these small stuffed aubergines in some variety of olive oil dressing, and christmas cake.

I also went to the most sensational steakhouse where there was a set menu, but it was the best steak I have ever had followed by my favourite desert ever, Creme Brulee…

Next we went to the Bekaa Valley for a few days the to Amman, but that’s next time I find a computer which won’t be for a while since we are about to head to Wadi Rum, a Bedouin camp in the Jordanian Desert so good luck finding internet there.

Hope everyone had a good New Years Eve etc.

Some of the buildings on Rue Gourard in Gemmayzeh.

More stuff on Rue Gourard. The French even do garages in style…

Some of the larger mansions in Achrafiye.

Of course some of the houses/apartments haven’t been renovated yet, ripe for some other (parents…)

The view from our hotel in Zahle, in the Bekaa Valley.

We got lost the first day (because Damascus taxi drivers are some of the stupidest people I’ve ever met and just say yes when they don’t know where it is you want to go and drive around for a bit), but finally ended up at the National Museum, which was very extensive (slightly tiring, I think I’m museumed out) and had a cool collection of Byzantine coins as well as some glassware and the like. The best part were all the colonial photos and documents from the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. We then tried to go to the Ummayid Mosque, the biggest in the country but it was getting late so we just ate for hours instead.

The next few days we spent exploring the Damascus old city, which is a maze of thousands of corridors and cheap eateries and shops. Once we stumbled upon the hipster-ville of gallery/cafe’s etc so we went the other way. There was an excellent pizza/zaatar place that cost like 50 cents for a meal. We did our secret santa shopping for Christmas. We finally made it to the Ummayid Mosque which was enormous, it looked like an airport arrival hall, and we had to go and get Lee some special clothes to enter, which turned out to be an enormous grey poncho, even though she had a scarf etc. Another place in the old city was the Azem Palace, the Ottoman Palace there, which was interesting, but the best part was the garden and the hilarious displays there with fake people imitating daily life.

One thing about Damascus was most of the food was atrocious. We made the mistake of getting some pizza, where the man told us we could have it any way we liked, so someone mentions vegetables and a bit of meat, so we get a pizza with cream and peas (!) and cauliflower, which was revolting. It also seems that some Syrians see us as nothing but walking dollar signs and try and overcharge us for everything. Once in a restaurant we queried why the bill was high as we had remembered our meal costs, only for the waiter to blatantly change the menu in front of us by pen; but we managed to embarass him sufficiently for him to reduce our meal cost somewhat…

We also went to the visa office because our stamps on the passport (which there are about 500 Syrian stamps, I think the more stamps they put the more important (and impoverished) the country is) said it was valid 15 days. After we find the office, we are told by the man at the desk he doesn’t stamp after 1pm (the time being 1.15pm) and to come back tomorrow, after which he won’t answer any questions about opening hours, and when we return to the hotel we are told we don’t actually need the stamp because the old stamp is out of date and really means 30 days…

We finally leave Damascus by bus heading for Beirut a few days before Christmas. We’re now in Amman, so I’ll fill in the Beirut part in a few days. Oh and Lee finally got a doctor because her cough wouldn’t go away and she had had it since the middle of Turkey, and so we found out she had Bronchitis and Farengitis and something else and had to take about 7 different medications… (but she’s fine now).

Damascus Downtown and some huge unfinished building that looks like it’s been there for a while.

The Ummayid Mosque wall, completely gold fresco’d.

The ‘Putting On Special Clothes Room’

The Minaret of the Ummayid Mosque, complete with loudspeaker system. In Turkey the clerics are banned from playing prerecorded prayers, but not in Syria. I was told they do it because they are scared of making mistakes, but I think it’s because they don’t want to wake up at 5am.

A residential street in the Old Town. I think in the building opposite I saw a sign for a neurosurgeon..

An older part of the old town, where things were falling down continously, but rich Europeans move in, take a lease and as part of it have to renovate the building.

Not many photos of Damascus, it wasn’t the prettiest place, but more of Beirut soon…

We took the train and returned via Aleppo to Deir ez-Zor, where a few people had told us to go. This was probably one of my favourite places we have been on the trip because there were absolutely no signs of westernisation or tourists. All the locals stared at us, ran up to us for photos or posed for us when we pulled out a camera. We ended up dining at a refurbished art deco diner in the middle of the main street which was very cool, and we ate a lot of fuul and falafel at these small cafes of sort along the backstreet. We didn’t understand what we were ordering and they attempted conversation with our three words of Arabic and their three words of English but it was tasty anyway.

Our hotel owner assured us the museum in town was the best in Syria. It was a deserted sovietesque building with hilarious displays on the ancient people of Syria, but it was worth the 25 cent entry. The only other attraction in town was the Euphrates River but it was fun to hang around a backwater and see what was happening.

Next stop was completely different. We went to Palmyra, which you shouldn’t go to. The attaction there are the ruins of ancient Palmyra, which are vast and quite cool and glow red at sunset. The problem is the entire town is reliant on tourism and apparently the post 9/11 slump has effected the town in such a way that all hotel owners hate each other and vye for tourists like a bloodsport, as do the restaurants. We should have known when a cab took us from the bus depot and refused to take us anywhere but this one hotel. Not a problem because it was fine and they were desperate and so we got an incredibly low price for a decent room.

We walked around the ruins one day, which was great, till Travers decided it was a good idea to climb a huge mountain up to the citadel, in the desert, around midday, so we quit. We came back at sunset and it was very pretty and so we took millions of useless photos and silly shots etc.

Palmyra is famous for having Zenobia, queen of the desert, back a very long time ago. She killed her husband and ruled in the name of her son, and when the Roman’s came to take back Palmyra, she defeated them then conquered pretty much all of the middle east and Egypt. When the Roman’s finally got to her she escaped on a camel and fled to Persia, then went back to Rome and married a senator…

Next we took a minivan to Hama, which is a pretty nowhere town near Damascus. The main attraction there was its proximity to the Crac des Chevaliers, which is the famous crusader castle. Hama itself was quite serene and pretty, our hostel was great (Riad Hostel) and the owner was a nice guy with an Australian accent he had learnt from the backpackers over the years. There was not really much else to say about the town, but the Crac was quite amazing, well preserved in every way.

The day after we left and went to Damascus, where we are now.

Hope everyone is oketc.

Deir ez-Zor at night. It was very cool. Fruit vendors at 11pm.

The Euphrates river, and the bridge which all the locals are very proud of for some reason.

Palmyra’s Citadel in the desert heat.

Palmyra’s ruins just before the sun started to set.

Again the ruins. This was a cool part of them, the arches went on for a kilometre or so which was the main street.

This was in Hama. They really do like their fruit – this guy demanded I take a photo of him.

This was in the same market. I find these butcher shops very cool. I wish we had better butchers in Australia.

The main part of town in Hama. Hama is famous for the Nora water wheels and nothing else.

The Crac des Chevaliers was very overgrown with hundreds of passageways where there were no people.

This is just a shot from the window of our room at the Damascus hostel.

We arrived in Goreme, Cappadocia a week or so ago, where it was absolutely freezing, staying in the Flinstones Hostel. The owner refused to turn the heating on for more than a few hours a day. We went for a few walks around the valley’s, where Travers got us lost several times. There is wild fruit growing everywhere and it’s extremely pretty. We also took a short tour that went past the underground cities built by the Hittites, then to an old church in a cave, and then to the tour guide’s cousins Onyx shop.

Finally we left the freezing cold, only after making friends with two girls from Melbourne and some random guy from Canada, and journeyed to Syria, where Lee lost her passport somehow and we all waited as it arrived by taxi.

Syria is amazing. We have been to Aleppo, staying in a place called the Tourist Hotel, which apart from the name was sensational so anyone going that way should definately stay there. It was clean, attractive and interesting and cheap too. We met some acquaintances Ani and her friend who organised the room for us. The first day we walked about the city’s souq’s (markets) and had loads of really cheap street food like a sweet that came in a pancake and was pastry with white cream cheese of some sort in the middle which was delicious.

The next day Ani drove us out to a citadel somewhere near the town which had the famous St. Simeon’s post, then to eat some fuul, which was great although she said she doesn’t like it at all. We visited the Christian quarter after Travers got us very lost again. We went to the Armenian Cathedral where a scary intense man just talked to me and questioned me on everything as I tried to reply in broken Armenian (which I’m slowly improving).

We have been eating a serious amount of food lately, the table is completely covered with mezze of all variety before we eat, and it’s so much better than Turkish food. We also visited the Baron Hotel which is an old 1900′s hotel where TE Lawrence went. I’ve read there are a whole bunch of hotels from that era scattered around the middle east so I intend to visit many of them.

Right now we are in Latakia, which is a seaside town and is very pretty. We took a train here at some early hour of the morning yesterday. Tomorrow we leave back for Dar el-Zur via Aleppo, then Palmyra and into Hama then Beirut. Ciao.

Capadocia, Pigeon Valley

I guess it wasn’t too bad getting lost here just cold.

The Souq at Aleppo.

Aleppo’s Old City.

Aleppo once again…

St. Simeon’s Church

View of Latakia from our hostel.