Damascus

These clips show a little of what the city is like. The first one shows a square where I was just sitting down under a tree desperately looking for some shade from the strong sun. The second one shows a busy street in the city and the third one shows a normally busy intersection where you can see the citadel (big stone thing) and the entrance to the souk (metal thing). It was taken on a Friday which is the holy day for Muslims. You can hear something being broadcast from the loudspeakers and see that there's not much activity on the streets.

Food in Damascus

Did you ever wonder what they eat in Syria? Well here you can see what I got for breakfast in the hostel I stayed in in Damascus. As you can see it includes a black coffee, apricots, olives, humus, tomato, cucumber, a boiled egg, bread, butter and jam. It was a pretty nice way to start the day.

This is a photo of a rooftop restaurant that we went to in Damascus. Ben, the American from our hostel was able to recommend this place from a previous visit. This part of the restaurant is on the rooftop of the building and has some great views of the city. The food was very good and we ate salads mainly and some chicken wings? They brought us some complimentary desserts when we had finished which included water melon and some sweet fried things? Not sure what it was, but I liked it. Afterwards we went to a pub / restaurant in the Christian quarter of Damascus and had a beer and smoked some shisha.

Roman ruins in Damascus

I was really surprised by the amount of roman ruins that I saw in Damascus. I just wasn't expecting to see so many ancient roman archways and columns in the city, but if I had read my history books in school I would have found out that Roman rule once covered a lot of what is now Europe, North Africa and some of Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran. Just by walking around the city you can see lots of these ruins.

One day I was walking around the city and these guys said something about a photo and I said sure I'll take your photo for you. But no, they wanted to get a photo with me, which I found a bit odd. I suppose they showed their friends the photo and said, look here's me with a foreigner, or something like that.

Take your shoes off !!

The Umayyad Mosque has an amazing history attached to it. The building that stands there today was built in 705AD. The site was previously used as a temple for Hadad, the Aramaic god of the ancient Syrians three thousand years ago. Then it was used as a pagan temple in Roman times and then as a church called St John the Baptist Church.



Here you can see the interior of the mosque. As you can see it is a very busy place and is still a place of worship so when you visit it you can see people praying and reading.



The mosque is located at the end of the souk, aka the Souk Al-Hamidieyeh. In this video clip you can see the square that separates the mosque entrance from the souk. You can also see the ruins of the Roman Temple of Jupiter, which were used as the foundations for the mosque - recycling, before it became popular.

Road to Damascus

I took a bus on 17 June 2009 from Aleppo to Damascus with Lisanne, the Dutch archaeology student. The journey of nearly 200 miles took 4 and a half hours and the views along the road were just amazing, saw loads of mountains and overloaded trucks carrying apricots.

On the bus trip from Turkey to Aleppo I didn't want to take any photos at all, I thought it might be frowned upon. You know you can read some real crap on the internet - I saw somewhere that you should be careful what you take photos of in Syria. Well that's wrong - it's like anywhere else in the world, you just need to use your common sense. The people are welcoming and don't mind being photographed as long as you're not messing around or taking the piss out of them.

Ahmed, from the hostel in Aleppo gave us the name of a hostel in Damascus - so we went there when we got to the bus station. The hostel was great, in the heart of the old town, near restaurants and cafes and all. Our roomate, Ben - an American archaeology student was able to show us around the city and it was really good to meet him - just like having our own tour guide. He had traveled all round the region because of what he was studying and it was very interesting to hear some of his tales.

Baron hotel Aleppo

When we arrived in Aleppo, Ahmed the hostel owner explained some of the local customs to us. He also gave us a sheet of paper in English with the most common Arabic phrases that we would need to make our life easier while in Syria. So we learned how to count from 1 to 100 and say things like 'Is there any cheaper?' and 'I love you' in Arabic. Very handy.
He explained that if we wanted to buy alcohol that there were only a few places we could go to. He mentioned the famous Baron hotel and told us about its history - that the author Agatha Christie and the soldier TE Lawrence had both stayed there. So we decided to go and have a look at this historic place. Just walking through the front door brings you way back in time. The bar is like something from the 1920's and you can see lots of old memorabilia around the place. I took a photo of the bill that Lawrence supposedly never paid when he stayed there. I also noticed an archaeological map of Syria from around the same time. You can definitely feel the hand of history in this place when you go inside. We got there at noon and I suggested we have a beer and the others agreed. Why not.

Aleppo Citadel

This building is truly amazing. It's massive inside and out and dates from about the 3rd millennium BC.

It's been attacked and restored many times during its lifetime. It has passed through many hands including Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols, Mamluks and Ottomans. Inside the citadel you can see buildings and monuments from all these different periods including a Roman amphitheatre. You get a great view of the city from the citadel - well worth the 10 Syrian pounds entrance fee for students. By the way that's about €0.15.