Tourath House Aleppo

... are soooo delicious!!! :) <br><br>We also went to a hammam, a Middle Eastern bath where you sweat and wash yourself to end up receiving a body scrub and massage by a bath attendant. Although the place was full of mold and other non-defineable liquids HelMan enjoyed the treatment very much and left the hammam totally relaxed. <br><br>One of the most striking experiences in Lebanon are the crazy traffic and the trucks. When backing up they do not have the usual beep beep ...

... restaurants and not like the normal coffeeshops. The restaurants charge for everything, even the tissue paper! The cheap food only seems to be from the kebab stalls next to the streets which only cater to takeaways and does not seem to be too hygienic. The only moderate ones seem to be the Fried Chicken Stores which I see from time to time, like the one from the day before. <br><br>After lunch I walked around the old city some more and came across this former Insane Asylum ...

... 45TRY (20GBP) busride to Adana.<br><br>And the buses themselves are not only cheap and plentiful, but really high quality. There's a guy - a steward, I guess - giving out water, tea or coffee, wet-wipes, and spritzes from his air freshener. The seats are comfy, and a satellite TV up front offered a Turkish comedy version of The Exorcist. The weirdest thing is that the rear half of the bus was off limits to passengers. Given that most of the luggage compartment under the ...

... it's a great place to put away your guide book and wander aimlessly. Again much of the market is covered, but in Aleppo the roof is mainly constructed from vaulted stone. Because Aleppo has been a little more of a backwater than Damascus it has faced less pressure to modernise, especially in the old town. As a result (along with some inspired town planning) very little new development has been carried out inside the oldest parts of the ...

... as they observed my foreign mannerisms. I found it most enjoyable. In one particularly heartwarming encounter, Mona an 18 year old student of english, translated for me with her entire family. Half way through they sent off their five year old son to go and buy me some chocolate, because I was strugglingly with the pumpkin seeds. This alone is testament to how generous and how safe Syria is. When it was time to go I watched with amusement, and a touch of incredulity ...

... of ingredients that result in delicious dishes. Iran wins hands down in the hospitality/friendliness department, but they are never going to win any awards for their cuisine (sorry Fari, Negi, and Amir). Syria, on the other hand, has much more of a Mediterranean influence and they use olive oil in everything but interestingly enough they aren't really a rice people - just lots of pita bread. I've had some really, really ...

... but some of the buildings were in still in a very good state, with carvings over doorways and whatnot, it was a very cool place to visit! And some of them were quite big - double storied, with little kitche areas still discernable with the cooking areas and holes in the rock to hang things from, it was awesome. We also visited a mosaic museum before being dropped at the busstop to head to Allepo, a 45 minute drive away. The museum had some very impressive pieces in it ...

... there are more Vestel adds with pictures of Kivanc Tatlitug, a handsome Turkish actor, than posters of Besar al-Esad. I was speaking to a young man who worked at a touristic store. He spoke a bit of Turkish. The dude was telling me that there are many Arabs in Urfa. Naively, I added that there are many in Hatay as well. He got slightly ****** and told me that the situation in Hatay was "different". How much they hate having lost it to Turkey...

... nocturnes.. on a tué le cinéma français!). Pas vraiment plus à dire sur cette première et modeste partie de la ville, dénuée d'âme pour mieux accueillir les touristes, certes peu nombreux en cette saison. La vieille ville, je ne l'ai découverte que ce dimanche, en jelabiyah. Le temps, comme la veille, était d'une qualité particulièrement adéquate pour se perdre dans ...

... sounds so magical and the feeling of being able to get lost in it has a scary, yet enticing, draw on me. Of course, as it would be, I got rudely awoken on the side of the main road running into Aleppo and thrown off the bus and into heat I haven't felt since the Kalahari. People were looking at me as though I had just landed from Mars! It was hot, I was tired and disorientated and then I had to navigate my way to a bus ...