Safwan Hotel Lattakia

... on my second day there, I managed to get lost and rudely told off for not being able to speak Arabic. Instead I went in search of the Roman Arch which is situated on the outside of a little slum and opposite what seemed to be some kind of park. Despite Hakim's good instructions, I still couldn't find the taxi rank or the taxi or the people to help in order to get there. How grand! I am in search of water and there is none around except the massive harbour. Needless to say, I did ...

... he didn't speak a word of English he was insistent on trying to talk to us the whole one and half hours there and also high fiving us whenever we kind of got an answer right. He made James sit in the front with him and I had to sit in the back, exactly in the middle of the seat, so clearly he could keep an eye on me in the rear-view mirror. He did make me feel quite uncomfortable and the high fives seemed to wander a bit. We were both very relieved to get the castle and ...

... a Lattakia plou. Com a bon motxiller, decideixo no agafar un taxi i recorrer el trajecte de l'estacio de tren a l'hotel a peu. Quan finalment hi arribo (despres d'uns moments de panic deguts a 1/ la meva desorientacio i 2/ la manca de cartells indicatius amb els noms dels carrers que fa que la desorientacio sigui absoluta), estic xop. Amb un dia com aquest, la visita a la ciutadella de Saladin es redueix a un minim, malgrat que la seva situacio geografica sigui forca ...

Hey People<br> <br>I finally made it out of Syria after spending 4 days and nights in a Lattakia hotel room suffering from diarrhoea with nothing to entertain me except one English TV channel that played 24-hour action movies (not my favourite) and a great view of the Mediterranean Sea where I was able to watch ships come in and out of the harbour and a group of men slaughter sheep on the sidewalk in front of my hotel.  I wonder if that is special to ...

Hey People I am lying in bed in my hotel room right now because that is all I can do without wearing a diaper or strapping a toilet to my ass. I drank some of the tap water served at the restaurant last night - big mistake - now I have what they call travelers diarrhoea and it isn't pretty. I got up every 15 minutes last night to visit the great white throne and just when I thought I couldn't ...

Lattakia is a city of just under a million about an hour north of Tartus. When I got on the bus to come here I was one of the last ones to climb aboard. When I looked down the aisle I was surprised to see that pretty much all of the other passengers were 20-something's... mostly women... I asked a guy behind me what was up with this and he said they were mostly university students returning to school after the weekend ...

... trucks up into the hold of a ship. Lattakia is Syria's main seaport. The longshoremen operating the cranes stack the containers nearly as high as the conning tower. We can't tell whether the containers are empty or full of commerce from Syria to China. But these days most shipping containers, all over the world, are going back to China empty. Syrians tell us that their biggest export is olive oil. Because of Syria's rogue state status trade restrictions have been imposed by the EU ...

... with an interest and curiousity that outweighed any real concern. We choose a restaurant that nýght because they made khubz tannoor and ate our last dýnner ýn Syria. We enjoyed a nice selectýon of mazza including the best kibbeh nayeh Ý´ve had. Evrim got enough protein too (stop worrying Bird). Sat a long time wýth Serj, a pretty cool Armenian Syrian kýd from Kesab who worked at the restaurant ýn the ...

... cities of Al Bara and Serjilla plus the tiny town Slumfeh which was covered in a layer of snow. There are some lovely beaches up near the Turkish border too. We also learned that the locals (few who admit to drinking alchohol ) drink a potent drink called Arak thats similar to sambuca or ouzo and its terrible stuff.

... from Aleppo was less than $2USD, so I decided "what the hell." Bashar was nice enough to give me a walking tour of the city and then join me for dinner with one of his friends. We later met with several others and stayed out talking on the waterfront until about 2AM. Bashar and his friends were more of the hospitable, friendly people that I've come to know in Syria. The next day we met up in the afternoon after his classes and he cooked a fantabulous meal. I was ...