Park Hotel Aleppo

... sound we are used to from home, but they play the melody of Lambada!!! <br><br>The last day we went to the ruins of St. Simeon cathedral and cuaght a bus going to Damascus afterwards. To buy the bus ticket we had to register with a local police officer which didn'tamuse Heli at all because he was scared to get tortured, raped and robbed by the cop. <br><br>And if you ever wondered how we master all the heat here.... there is none, it's cold and it's raining!!! <br><br>

... now serves as a musuem. It was free admission and quite inconspicous. It had a maze of narrow corridors with cells on either side. But each cell had a view to a little courtyard with a fountain in the middle of it. Seems the running water is there to soothe the inmates. I got back to the hotel by dusk.<br><br>26 Oct<br>I got out of the hotel pretty late today, at 11.30. Since St Simeon is out of the equation I figured I got more time to slack around and try to clear my system ...

... was full of boxes, my theory is that buses perform double duty for transporting light goods from Istanbul to the rest of the country in the stead of trucks.<br><br>I probably would have loved it had not the baby behind me thrown up an hour into the 9-hour haul and the steward declined to use his air freshener. That, compounded by the slow border crossing (at least I didn't have to pay baksheesh, having secured a visa back in London), and the incredible traffic, noise and ...

... Also, as less tourists visit Aleppo the market is a lot more of a locals market &#8211; we saw very few tourists anywhere in Aleppo while we were there (although we did meet a bunch of Kiwis at our hotel, one of the few located inside the old city).<br><br>The hotel we chose (Dar Halabia) was a stunner &#8211; another converted house with a big interior courtyard (complete with the biggest lemon tree I've ever seen), and a great ...

... as Mona and her twelve other family members piled into one very small truck. They had offered me everything they had and asked for nothing in return, despite the fact that these people were clearly quite poor. As the mini truck drove off I waved them goodbye and Mona waved childishly from the back of the cramped truck shouting 'I will never forget you Bem'. My heart broke. <br><br>If this is what George Bush meant by 'The Axis of Evil' then he is absolutely right.<br> <br>

... meals here, and since the French were in charge here in the early part of the century there is also a lot of French influence in their cooking too - yum. All of which to say, the highlight of my time in Aleppo was the food. The rest was a bit of disappointment especially compared to Damascus. It probably didn't help that the weather wasn't great - we had gushing, torrential rain for a few days - but besides that it was just a ...

... all over Syria. Some had religious designs, some of myths, and some were of animals and wine and the like. Allepo was a nice town, known for its amazing food. I stayed with a guy through couchsurfing, and once I had dropped my bag at his place he took me to his favourite restaurant which does syrian food and yep, it was scrummy..sour cherry meatballs ýs all ý can remember..My fýrst day of wanderýng ý bumped into Bob the amerýcan on the street and we had a lovely day, dr ...

Abdurrahman Amca did not let me travel to Aleppo alone. Kindly, he arranged a car and took me there himself. We spent an hour at the gate to get Abdurrahman Amca a visa. Our driver had to bribe the Syrian custom inspectors 100 Suris in order to "expedite" the process. There are ruins stuck in the buffer zone between the two countries and you are not allowed to stop there. When we moved into Syria there was no gradual change. It was all so sudden. The ...

... ruelles d'Alep lorsque je ne trainais pas dans un de ses nombreux souqs, pour la plupart couverts (sauf que l'ensemble fait bien moins artificiel qu'à Damas, ce surtout grâce à ses modestes dimensions). Assez charmant, ponctué des inévitables khans (petites clairières fondées pour faciliter le boulot des marchands), mosquées et madrassas. Je découvrai le tout avec ...

... Happy days. Aleppo was not going to be a place I was going to stay. I wanted the beach, water and something a little bit more tranquil. Heading for the bus station, I encountered a guy. Let me first ask you this: have you ever arrived in a foreign country no knowing where you are and looking like a complete alien, only to have a random stranger walk you nearly a kilometre to the taxi rank and pay your taxi fare to get to ...