Damascus is a busy hectic city steeped in history, both Biblical and Islamic. Today we set off with a group of two New Zealanders and two from the UK to do a guided tour of Damascus (this guide was the chap who originally met us at the airport). First stop the Damascus museum, where we saw items from some of the sites we had visited. (Wish we could view things insitu instead of museums!). Then it was off to the souks for a smell of spices.Next we visited the Uma...

 We arrived in Palmyra, an ancient Assyrian Caravan town for over 1,000 years, on a Friday afternoon. Friday is holy day for the Islamic faith and means mostly everything is shut. This was quite pleasant as we could explore the town without any hassle - not that their is much hassle in Syria really. Lots of little children were out in the streets playing and parents and grandparents sat on their front steps enjoying a day off. We were like celebrities to the ch...

 A funny thing happened to Saul on the road to Damascus - to us to! We found the Bagdad Cafe. Close to the turn off to Iraq (only 152 kms away) we stopped at this little Bedouin Enterprise and had a cup of tea and chatted to the brothers who set this up in the middle of the desert, with no available water. Hope it works for them.Of course Saul's happening was a little more significant, which involved falling off his horse, going blind and changing his name ...

Ebla is a reasonably recently discovered archaeological site of great significance as the artefact's and parts of buildings found date back to 2,000BC! There is not yet much excavated and Syria has a big job ahead of them. There was a busload of school children from Aleppo on excursion there and they practiced there English "Hello How are you" on us, with much giggling.   Next was the city of Hama where ancient wooden water wheels, 20 metres in diameter, a...

At breakfast, we met some East Coast Aussies who had been to Coral Bay! Sailed in on a yacht.Our first tour today, with a great guide (a real dapper gentleman) was of the 12th century Islamic Citadel where 3,000 people lived. Then we escaped from Aleppo's crazy traffic (it is a city of 4 million people) into the countryside near the Turkey border to see St Simeon's Monastery and Basilica. Simeon was a bit of a strange Christian dude in the 400's AD w...