Aleppo - Oldest inhabited city in the world?

Aleppo is together with Damascus supposed to be the oldest inhabited city in the world - that's some reputation. Today it's got a population of around 4 million and is a bustling polluted place.

As I mentioned before I met some other westerners at the border when we had to get off the bus to buy over visas. I met Lisanne, a Dutch archaeology student and Renaud, a French political science student. I had no hostel booked, but had an address of a place that I found on the web. There weren't very many hostels popping up in the searchengine when I entered Aleppo! So we hung around together and stayed in the same hostel.

The souk in Aleppo is much more relaxed than the crazy grand bazaar in Istanbul. You aren't hasseled at all (only in a nice way) and so you can look around in peace. Two very funny locals invited us into their shop to view the silver jewellery that they make. They said they were brothers and they made loads of jokes about where we came from - Ireland, France and Holland and slagged each other off. As we weren't in the market for jewellery we said we were looking for a restaurant, which we were and left to find one.

We found a place overlooking the main mosque that was mentioned in a guidebook. It got a good review in the guidebook and it's well deserved. It was very nice, food was really good and the staff were very friendly. They even had cheap sheesha pipes, must come back later.