The Palmyra

... Greek trading city.

Tania celebrated her xx birthday and having researched the local restaurant scene we found one of the most beautiful restaurants we have ever been to as a special treat. So off we went planning to order a fine bottle of Lebanese vino and enjoy a luxurious meal, when low and behold, they had no alcohol!!! :( I don't mind telling you there was almost a riot, but I just about managed to control her.
Palmyra, Syria welovemondays

A couple of people have mentioned that the weird zigzagged lines on the blog's map are a bit confusing due to posts about events that take place where I'm not actually traveling: Connie's baby in LA, Kathleen's baby in NY, and now this post in Berlin. So I've decided to engage in some revisionist history and changed those postings to reflect where I was when it happened, and ...

... it and tried uselessly to ask if it went into the centre. In the end the bus driver said "No." A girl form Aleppo then approached us and asked if we needed help as she would translate for us. "We just want to get to the centre of town." But while talking to the girl the bus driver was ringing someone to find out where our hotel was. It was the right bus and he refused to let us pay.

It is amazing how **** the people in Palmyra were compared to the rest of the country.

... Palmyra the desert stretches as far as the eye can see, but the springs around the city had kept it's inhabitants watered for thousands of years. The green of the palms was a welcome contrast to the burnt brown of the desert everywhere else.

As well as the ruins there are also a number of impressive funerary towers – I'm not sure if the ground in the "valley of tombs" was too hard, or if the locals liked to honour their ancestors with towers rather than ...

... To give you an idea, since there are no pedestrian connections you essentially have to jaywalk across traffic. In Aleppo I stepped out into the street and cut someone off who had to slam on their breaks. Instead of swearing at me he said "Hello! Welcome to my country". We have a few more days in Syria (two more in Palmyra and two in Damasscus(sp?)) before we continue on to Jordan. Overall this has been a fantastic trip so far and I'm looking forward to the next

... is ruins - and lots of them. The main colonnades are free and available to walk through and go on for about a mile or so. But as you can see from the pictures, just a lot of stone that is either incorrectly slapped together or left to return to the desert from which it came. What survived of the statues and decoration from this area is in the city's museum which unfortunately is not very well-documented. There are some other ...

... desert. I was really quite impressed with Palmyra there was hardly any tourists around and it was kind of weird just having an old city right in the middle of the desert but it was impressive, I managed to get some good sunset photos but the Internet is to slow here so I will have to upload them another time. Looking forward to having a good night sleep and heading off tomorrow to Hama to see Crac an old Roman crusader castle.

... descendante de Cleopatre et parait-il aussi charmante que la sex symbol egyptienne. Dans un remarquable exces de confiance la jeune reine, en outre cible de soupcons quant a la mort d'Odeinat, a pris les commandes de l'armee de Palmyre, mettant a terre les Syriens et meme les Egyptiens. La fete prit fin avec la reaction musclee romaine, Aurelien capturant Zenobia et la ramenant ...

... ride. I know it sounds so stupid to be arguing over something so trivial but sometimes it's all about principal. Oh well, it was all in good fun and we were all still smiling which is important. By the time we arrived back in Damascus I was so hot, tired, and hungry. None of the drivers spoke english, or just drove off. I refused to take a taxi and pay 10 times more than a crammed minibus. I asked this Syrian guy next to me, Jaleel ...