The last day of our short visit to Syria revealed yet more magnificent treasures - the waterwheels on the beautiful river in the city of Hama, the archetypal Crusader castle or "Krak des Chevaliers", and finally, before our return to Damascus, the mountain town of Ma'alula, where we experienced the Lord's prayer being recited in Arabic and Aramaic. Hama is quite a large city situated on the Orontes river. Its most famous attractions are its 17 Norias (waterwhee...

Aleppo, or Halab, as it is called in Arabic, is, like Damascus, one of the oldest occupied cities in the world. Both date back around 5000 years. Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, has a population of about 2 1/2 million and its old city, like that of Damascus, has been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It assumed importance thousands of years ago owing to its location on the Europe-India route and on the part of the Silk Road leading from China to the ...

The outskirts of the town of Deir ez-Zur on the Euphrates (geography classes about the fertile crescent way back in about 1952 in Sydney were coming to life at last!) were our first "tea stop" after leaving Palmyra. The omnipresent Assad family was with us there in all directions (of course!) and at the roadside was not only a Beduin hitchhiker but also some local council workers planting oleanders and olive trees in irrigated ditches in what (again) seemed like ...

Cafe Baghdad in the middle of the vast desert was inviting for a "cuppa" made for us by a Bedouin family that manages to subsist literally in the middle of nowhere. The ruling Assad family accompanied us the whole trip - their faces even appear in the desert, as well as everywhere else. The (probably Hellenistic) tower tombs were our first glimpse of Palmyra. The nearby ruins of the oasis city of the famous woman called Zenobia, the Arab ruler of Palmyr...

We can highly recommend a trip to Syria in October - weather pleasant (not too hot), very few tourists. 8 days on a tour were not quite enough - 10-11 would have been preferable to cover the main sights -Damascus, Palmyra (Tadmur), Mari, Dura Europos, Deir ez-Zur, ar-Rusafa, the Assad dam, Aleppo (Halab), St. Simeon's monastery ruins, Hama, Krak des Chevaliers and Ma'alula. Not actually a place to take the kids (unless they are 30+) - it's history and culture al...