Because our Internet access has not been great while travelling I got behind on the blog. And now that we made it to England we have been busy and having a good time. In about 2 hours we will depart from Highworth for Heathrow airport. An hour and a half drive. We are heading home to OZ tonight. I have a head cold and Carol's cold is just starting. Tonights flight will be a bit unusual as we 3 ( carol Sean and Myself) are all on the same flight but because we booked at three separate times we are sitting [View Full Entry]

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When we arrived in Istanbul it was very windy and seemed like every street corner had someone selling Umbrella for 5TL (about $4 OZ) I bought one the second day and by the time we left Venice we had three. One that Rose gave us and one that we found. At every port we saw bins of broken Umbrellas - a sign that a storm has swept through the region. [View Full Entry]

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Onward to Istanbul and the Cruise. Our overnight bus journey to Istanbul was relatively uneventful with several stops at roadside service centres catering to the Bus trade, The highways in Turkey are modern and there are of toll roads as we approached Ankara and later Istanbul. From Goreme there were 9 Buses leaving within a 1 hour time frame and much to my surprise most were full. This is the very end of the tourist season. Ticket prices varied from 30 TLY to 45 TLY. We chose one that promised hot and cold drinks on the journey, a new coach and [View Full Entry]

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Turkish Syrian border crossing and Goreme. The drive from Aleppo in Syria to Goreme in Turkey took the best part of 14 hours. Quite a few of those hours were taken up at the border crossing. Getting into Turkey was relatively easy but getting out of Syria was unnecessarily time consuming. I think in all there were 8 passport inspections to make sure that we had paid for and received our exit stamp. The exit permit cost 550SN Pounds. You are only allowed to visit Syria if you have an invitation and this can be arranged by a Travel agent, for [View Full Entry]

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Aleppo, Syria In the afternoon before arriving in Aleppo we visited the hillside castle of Crac De Chevallier or Castle of the knights. It has other names because at various time throughout history the Castle has been occupied by Christian and Muslim armies. It is sited on a hill near Homs, in Northern Syria and for the most part looks impregnable. According to the history notes the castle was being defended by Christian Knights. A Muslim army had laid siege and a forged letter from the Knights Bishop was presented to the Castle commander ordering them to surrender. Kate warned me [View Full Entry]

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Palmyra - Time now for some Roman ruins and a history lesson. After leaving our desert camp in Wadi Rum we drove further North into Syria until we arrived at the ruins of Palmyra which is also the name of the adjacent town. Palmyra dates to before the 1st century BC with many of the ruins and monuments having been built during the reign of the Nabateans and eventually the Romans invaded and conquered the area and built what must have been a magnificent outpost of the Roman Empire. We spent the afternoon wandering the site and eventually made our way [View Full Entry]

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Damascus Some of our group are doing a day trip into Lebanon which periodically closes its border to tours. Kate did the tour last April and the border was closed shortly after. I am sure the closure had nothing to do with Kate’s visit. From our camp it is a Taxi ride into Damascus central so at 9am 12 of us walked about 1 km to wave down a Taxi and it was a small mini bus that pulled up. These operate much like a bus service with no determined route unlike a Taxi that you hire for a private single [View Full Entry]

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Swimming in the Dead Sea. This morning after a breakfast of pancakes we drove north through Jordon to the Dead Sea. As much as I had read about the salinity nothing can prepare you for the actual experience. The Dead Sea levels have been dropping for a number of years and I read that there is a proposal to pipe water from the Red Sea. We parked about 15M above sea level. That is the Dead Sea level which is 400M below true sea level. We had to walk over 100M to commence our swim. There is so much salt along [View Full Entry]

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Petra. Not what I expected. Tuesday morning we drove to Wadi Musa. This is large town on the doorstep to Petra. I imagined that the Nabatean city of Petra was in some out of the way canyon far out in the desert. I could not have been more wrong as I would find out in the morning. For the rest of the afternoon it was a “free time”. It was too hot to walk into town so most of us stayed around the hotel pool or watched Indiana Jones in the hotel lounge. Our accommodation for the next two nights was [View Full Entry]

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Day 15 - Saturday 17th October. Ferry crossing to Aqaba in Jordan. We departed Dahab at 8.30am and after 2 hours arrived at the port village of Nuweiba for our ferry crossing to Jordan. Tracy our tour leader just explained that every time she does this crossing the procedure is different. There is an exit tax of 50LE plus the ferry ticket of 60LE both are paid at the ferry ticket office where our passports are needed before a ticket is issued. Next we go through security where we must all present at least one bag to be x-rayed. It doesn’t [View Full Entry]

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