Noria Hotel Hamah

... happened to pull up next to the taxi and the driver asked the bus driver for change and he got it. For all his troubles I gave him an extra 50 SYP tip. <br><br>As usual there were touts for the buses and so lots of services to choose from. The book was right, in that no advance booking was neccessary. I manage to get on the bus that was left in ten minutes after I bought a 100 SYP ticket. The book was wrong about the journey times though. It mentioned ...

... in syria, but I cannot help but ration my breaths as I walk over the bridges quickly snapping as many cliche photos of these huge wheels and their fishing companions. The images that pass through my camera are of a post apocalyptic Rockwellian nature. I'm sure there is a three headed fish in there somewhere. <br>Yet there is a dirty beauty to this city. Perhaps a Cinderella that just needs the right dress and a pumpkin that hasn't begun to rot like the rest of the produce market. Also ...

... economic (Venetian merchants paid through the nose for access to the silk road) level.<br><br>And taking my cues mostly from a procrastination session of a few months back that only Wikipedia can so protract (I think it started somehow with Age of Empires, which I haven't even played for years), I went on to recount the arc of the early successes devolving into later failures, our unanimous favorite being the Children's Crusade, apparently apocryphal ...

... Hama we thought it best to actually utilize our time for a change, we arranged a day trip to the dead cities and Apamea. After a quick breakfast of juice we headed off to see some more ruins. <br>Our first stop was Apamea, founded early in the 3rd century BC overlooking the Al-Ghab plains. In its hay-day Apamea boasted a population of about 500 000. It is amazing that such a ruin has so little interest from not only tourist but local historians as ...

... to see a room (we were desperate for a shower) he ignored us for a moment, picking up his water bottle and drinking from it for what felt like 5 minutes, then he began his walk to the elevator, desperate to show us everything would be in his time on his terms. It was the strangest thing I have ever witnessed in a paying hotel! He moved each leg like someone was moving it with a remote control (scowling the whole time).... so slowly that James and I had to giggle to each other &#8211; the ...

... and coffee tables. The photos do not do the site justice, apart from the poppy fields. A word of warning however, don't go running through the fields, as they are home to some of the most evil thistles the world has ever invented. The prickles on these babies go right through all but the thickest leather. The day finished with a short visit to Hama. Ancient moaning waterwheels have been lifting water up to aqueducts for irrigation since 1,100 AD ...

... built houses on mini-cliffs. The rest of the land is green, arable land, with a lot of stepped farmland. The trip from Musyaf to Crac was nausea inducing. We travelled on a lot of small winding country roads that went up hill and down dale and the driver was a touch generous when it came to using the accelerator. Our guide book informed us that Crac "never ever disappoints". It was a nice place to visit and you could not really come to Syria without seeing ...