Travelogue - Part 5

Palmyra

Our next stop after Damascus was Palmyra, a town situated right next to another set of Roman ruins. We had an enthusiastic, friendly guide, who told us lots about the history of the place, and the ruins were very impressive:

That was about it for Palmyra, although we did get quite a nice sunset view of the town and the ruins on the from the top of a hill, which had an old Arabic citadel on it. A guy also tried to sell us Iraqi bank notes with Saddam Hussein on them while were eating at a restaurant! Next, it was off to Krac Des Chevaliers: an old Crusader fortress. On the way, we had the opportunity to go to Iraq, although the tour leader said we'd have to sign some forms first! ;)




Krac des Chevaliers (Fortress of Knights) 

We started to see some really nice, green, scenery as we got closer to our hotel near the fortress, which was a welcome change from the fairly barren landscape we'd been seeing all the way through Egypt, Jordan and Syria to date. After getting out of the bus and settling into our hotel, we also got to appreciate the first truly cool weather we'd had since the start of the trip, and see some strange, fluffy, things that I'd almost forgotten existed: clouds! We'd arrived fairly late in the day, so we headed down the hill a bit to a restaurant for dinner shortly after getting settled in. On the way, I managed to snap a quite cool sunset shot (which unfortunately loses something with the software I'm using over here):
   

I don't normally talk about the meals we have, 'cause that'd just get boring, but this one was really good, with all sorts of delicious dips and bits and pieces for starters, and some very nice chicken and chips for mains. There wasn't any dessert, which was just as well, because we were all full by that point! Unfortunately however, I apparently missed the information from our tour leader at some point that you absolutely shouldn't drink Syrian wine, and ordered a glass of white. It now proudly sits at the top of the "worst wines I've ever tasted" list (and I've tasted some bad ones!). Oh well: at least I can say I now know why you don't drink Syrian wines from experience, not just hearsay! The next day, we headed down to the fortress:

Author Paul Theroux apparently described it as "the epitome of the dream castle of childhood fantasies", and after having been through it, I absolutely have to agree with him. Towers, battlements with fantastic views, secret passages, stairs descending into the darkness that you needed a torch for, branching corridors, dark passages, and room after room after room for everything from cooking to stables. The scale of the thing was enormous, and it took us about 2 1/2 hours to go through just about the whole thing. Unfortunately it's impossible to properly capture the feel of it all with photos, but here are a few anyway:

Aleppo 

Our next stop was Aleppo, which began with a semi-push through a crowded soukh before we reached our hotel, which was a little pocket of tranquility just down a little alley off to the side. After a quick orientation walk, mostly of the new city, which was quite modern, we headed off for dinner at a really nice restaurant overlooking the mosque, then headed back to the hotel partly via the soukh, which had an extra feeling of life to it from all the lights which were strung up in it (sadly, no photos!). The next morning, we had a tour with a guide whom our leader had described as quite a character. He definitely was one, and was handing out sweets for answers to his questions, which ranged from the formula for the volume of a sphere, to would God forgive him for looking down into the girls' hamam when he couldn't go there any more after he got too old! The tour was really good, and we got to find out a lot of things about the old town and some things about Syria as well.

After the tour, I had a quick wander with a couple of the group around the soukhs, but was fairly much soukhed out by this point. I headed back to the hotel to grab my bathers so I could go to the hamam we'd seen during the tour for my first ever Turkish bath, or the Middle Eastern version of one, in this case. It was something that I'd been looking forward to for a while. I headed up to the hamam and, undeterred by all the stories I'd heard of contortion-causing bath attendants, I handed over my money for the full bath, scrub and massage treatment, and got changed. A hamam is basically modelled on the original Roman bath style, although different ones seemed to include or omit certain rooms. For the first part of my bath, I sat down in front of a stone basin set in to the wall, and had my hair washed with some olive oil soap the town was known for, which is apparently good for your skin, but really doesn't smell that good! For anyone who doesn't know already, you basically rinse yourself off with shallow metal bowlfuls of water, which is a better feeling than having a shower in some ways, if you ask me. Being able to pour small waterfalls of gloriously hot water over your head and body is a wonderful feeling.

For the next step, an old, wirey guy showed up, and proceeded to scrub down almost every inch of my body with a large glove, which was quite rough, but not too uncomfortable. He then rinsed me down and gave me a short massage, which, to be honest, wasn't all that much, although it didn't involve any contortionist movements, either! After that, I plunged into the small, cold pool they had, then lay down on the couches in the main area outside the baths after getting mummified wıth several towels. I sipped a Coke they gave me for a while, then hauled myself up and headed back to the hotel, feeling somewhat relaxed, and about the cleanest I'd felt in a long time!

The next morning, we got up earlyish and explored the Aleppo Citadel, which had been closed the day before. It was quite cool, even if it wasn't anything really special.