Heliopolis Palmyra

So we made it across the border without a visa, pretty much problem free. a guy on the bus totally helped us across the border (good thing, because all the signs are in arabic).
everybody is so friendly here. we met some arab guys while having tea one night and they totally picked up our tab (without us knowing) and then showed us around town. they are about to leave for ...

... My favorite bit is that he was doing all this at the behest of Thetis, making him Greek's earliest mama's boy.

Anyway, the tomb is a pretty small and claustrophobic space, but they managed to pack in close to 400 bodies down there. The strangest thing about the tombs is that you can only enter briefly at fixed times of day: 8:30am, 10am, and 4pm. I understand they might not want man it during midday due to the incredible desert heat, but I don't get the ...

... know, but we survived. Within minutes of there was a tour bus arriving and sprouting people. We had enough. We headed back to our hostel for a nap and breakfast. We said our goodbyes to our two new friends from Mar Musa and headed back to Damascus.

For the first time in the middle east Shona felt uncomfortable. On the bus back from Palmyra for the entire 3 hour journey, there was 2 young men continually turning around and staring. Every time she moved they would chat ...

... too. Again we were taken by the lack of tourists – the guys selling camel and horse rides outnumbered the foreigners by about 2:1.

We wandered along the cardo maximus, taking in the theatre, the baths, the market place and countless other sights. As we'd arrived in the afternoon our goal was to walk through the ruins and then climb to the citadel to catch the sunset. The citadel was perched, eyrie-like, on a natural promontory 750m past the old city ...

... exchange) and the old city. We were not able to do much other than visit St. Simeon and the Aleppo Citidal as it was unusually hot for this time of year (mid 30s instead of 25-28°C). A lot of our time was spent in our hotel room with small breaks into the city to acclimitize. We then made our way to Hamas - home of the water wheels and visited Krac des Chevalliers; one of the best preserved crusader castles in the world. It was very interesting and ...

After a longer than planned stay in Damascus, we finally left and made our way to Palmyra. Palmyra is a Babylonian city and has existed since the 19th century B.C. It's an oasis in the middle of a vast desert and was a central spot for a trade route between the Arab Gulf to the Mediterranean. The city went through 400 years of peace and prosperity before (you guessed it) the Roman Empire came through and Emperor Hadrian claimed ...

... to the bus and the conductor told me the bus was not running, I then went back to the office and got a refund, then I went back to the bus to see what was going on then he let me get on the bus. I just dint understand their logic it is so backwards it is unbelievable, I have been to some backward country's but it was a real joke, Lebanon is trying to become a 1st world country but they come across as useless in so many ways ...

... s, Greer's, Anita, Terri, and me plus the 4 drivers from school.  All of us were excited to go see these ruins as none of us had ever been there before.  Cameras were ready!!! As we got close to Palmyra, the ruins started to jut out of the hills and land around us.  There was a "castle" at the top, tombs all around us looking like toothpicks jutting out of the sand, and then there were the ruins of the city that didn't seem to end.

... road!! The site at Palmyra was built by the Assyrians and then taken over by the Romans in the mid 1st century. To my shock, the only tourists there were me and a Polish couple.. for being the most popular tourist spot in Syria.- welcome to low season. I've never seen an attraction quite so barren before, it was nice actually.

The heat became too much and I called it a day around 3pm. I walked all the way back, wandered ...