Royal (Suites) Damascus

... remember reciting these 10 words since the very beginning of my fog, and always wondering whether they were correct.<br><br>I have no idea where this memory comes from, and have no memory of my parents ever reciting the numbers to me &#8230; which I suppose they must have once &#8230; unless it was an Arab helper.<br><br>With a tiny, solipsistic thrill, I discover the words work in real life.<br><br>Hit Aleppo, in northwest Syria, sit back and shake off some dust on the verandah of ...

... faiths worshipping before<br>the shrine to St John The Baptist. Over the next few days we are to<br>see examples of this all over Syria, Christians and Muslims praying<br>together....makes you wonder whether our problems aren't actually<br>political rather than religious &#8211; over oil rather than prophets?<br>The<br>streets behind the mosque are cobbled, lined by wooden shops and<br>covered by vine and jasmine trelisses. After some shopping we settle<br>down to listen to ...

... or living beings. I have to say it smelled like feet, probably because everyone carried their shoes inside instead of leaving them outside. A bad habit in my opinion. I never entered a temple in Thailand that smelled like feet and I can't even say how many temples I went in while I was there, but shoes always had to stay outside so I blame the shoes. John the Baptist's tomb is also inside the mosque as it is said they found his head during construction way way back in ...

... my mind quickly reminds me that I had read somewhere a while back that Syria is well known for it's frequent power cuts. A few minutes later (and after a somewhat interesting search for my torch) the power is restored &#8211; if only for a little while.<br><br>How has Damascus been otherwise? It has been quite a while since I genuinely found a city very interesting (having visited so many of the last few years). Wandering the old part of ...

... rundt i kaoset. Plutselig bestemte vi oss for å hoppe på, og la oss rive med. Der satt vi, i en minibuss med tre familier og noen ekstra menn, og lot oss drive langs veiene med døren oppe, slik at vinden slo løs håret og tvang øynene til å anstrenge seg for å se ALT! Da vi tilslutt forstod at minibussen var på vei til "suburbia", måtte vi ut - vi ville ikke dra dit, ble vi fortalt av våre nye venner. Da det til slutt var på tide å peke nesa hjemover var vi fullstendig ...

... attached to the new Four Seasons Hotel, which is a massive modern citadel. <br><br>At my first hostel, Al Haramien, I met a Korean girl, Karam, who had been studying in Istanbul for the last few months. She encouraged me to check-in at the Korean Guest House with her the following day, which was just across the lane from our current hostel. Although I was the only non-Asian staying at the hostel, everyone was very welcoming and I was even invited to share a ...

... was to make you bleed if he could. Your skin is scratched off in a similar fashion to what happens a couple of days after getting terrible heat stroke, burning like a lobster and not putting after sun on. It really is crazy how much skin he takes off - all dead skin Tak assures me! After a soft rub down and another hot rinse with the famous Aleppan soap, my skin actually felt like silk! Truly remarkable! The pain was worth it and I've already made Tak promise we'll go to the ...

... 20 feet high and very impressively carved and painted. There were lots of families enjoying the day out. I noticed the little girls were all dressed in fancy shoes or boots and skirts with matching jackets, or dresses with matching hats. The girls about 8 or 9 are now into the covered heads and skirts and sweaters or jackets. The square by the mosque has lots of bird seed sellers to feed the pigeons that hang around there. Back up the Souq al-Hamidiyya where there ...

... required the females in our group to don very unbecoming outfits from "the special clothes room". Hoods had to kept on the hair at all times but no restrictions on the men? The Mosque is built on the site of the original temple of the God Jupiter. The Christians then used the site to build a huge Byzantine Cathedral. In 705AD it became a Mosque under Islamic rule but many of the original parts are still of the Church. The actual head of John the ...

... consult the guide book to know why I was even in the ditch. Thanks Kamal. By the end of the walk I wanted to return to Damascus. Before returning to the hotel, we drove up to a vista point on Jebel Quassion. In getting there we drove through the more upscale and diplomatic areas of Damascus. The French did a nice job in laying out the new part of the city: broad boulevards, leafy green parks, fountains and distinctive looking ...