RAMBLING ON THROUGH SYRIA

Google blog is really bad tonight, second attempt yet again

Aleppo buses

After my meal at the three Greyhounds last night I returned home to find the electric back on but by then I'd a bad stomach again, guess it wasn't recovered enough for bad few pints of Guinness, no explanation from electric supplier ( again). Back to the Syrian trip, our evening after the do with the secret police was at the Beit Sissi restaurant where I fell ill , it was a bit touristy and nowhere as good as Lonely planet intimated. The next day we carried on to Palmyra which involved a trip back down the motorway retracing our steps past hama where I omitted to mention its giant water wheels and the fact that the guide missed out the reason why most of the old town has vanished, civil war in the 80s.Going though the desert you had continual glimpsed of the missiles, tanks and airfields deployed against Israel invasion threat. We stopped at a Bedouin tribes farmstead and had tea, most of the working people we away in the west near the coast with the stock, the old and infirm and ladies stayed at home, we gave them some drugs for the old guy who had swollen knees and our driver nearly found a mate with an unmarried daughter ( with gold tooth and haggard looks he sweated a bit). The old lady had the henna tattoos on her face. Palmyra was reached late afternoon, we started at the castle overlooking the ancient city and the towers of the dead, stayed overnight in an abysmal hotel swamped with coach tourists but had a nice buffet dinner on the terrace in the hot desert night overlooking the flood lit ruins at the Zenobia hotel nearby. The Bedouins plague tourists with camels and postcards but you can’t take away from the sheer scale of the remains and their interest although I was getting a bit over laden with facts and figures by then. We stopped at the Baghdad café on the way south on the junction with the road into Iraq, the owner was dealing in hawks. After this it was south west back to Damascus and the safe haven of the Four Seasons hotel again.