thebenders

On Wednesday, we took a minibus to Petra, an ancient City built by the Nabateans, who were Arabs who traded in frankincense and controled the trade route between Damascus and Arabia. They adopted many of the customs and building styles of the people they traded with, and developed advanced hydrolic engineering to control floods. Most of the remaining buildings, those that have survived the numerous earthquakes in the region, were carved directly into the beautiful pink rock. As soon as we arrived, we headed for a hike in the site. You enter the main area through a beautiful mile-long canyon, called the siq, which ends in a view of the giant Treasury building carved into the rock (this is where Indiana Jones found the grail in The Last Crusade). We hiked through many of the ruins, ... read more

On Sunday, headed out for the 10:30 mass at the church Maurice recommended. The streets were packed with people, including a bunch of little kids in white dresses and tuxes - so cute -- and people holding olive branches, which are used here instead of palms. Somehow, we walked right past the church without realizing it, and wandered around for a while, and then went in some other catholic chuch, which was not Roman Catholic but some other kind. We tried to stay for the mass but it was not only in Arabic, but really different than the masses we're used to - so we left about halfway through because we felt weird. Then we spent the rest of the day just wandering, hanging out in cafes, and enjoying old Damascus, which is very easy to ... read more

On Friday, we headed to Palmyra, passing up a tour offered by our hotel and taking a bus instead. As usual, our tour book made it sound much more difficult to reach than it actually was - we just walked about 20 minutes to a bus station and then grabbed the next bus, leaving 15 minutes later, directly to Palmyra, for about $6 total. Our hotel in Hama was charging people about $100 for a day trip to Palmyra, making a few stops at sites along the way - which is something we're getting tired of anyway after 2 days being driven around by Ibrahim. Palmyra is gorgeous, pink sandstone Roman ruins nestled in the desert. Some of the ruins have been restored, so you can really get a sense of how the city looked in ... read more

On Wednesday, we headed out for our tour of Qala'at Samaan - which is a chuch from the 5th century dedicated to St. Simon, who spent 36 ye on top of various pillars. After he died, his followers built the church around the last pillar he was on. Then we headed to various "Dead Cities" which are ruins of very large cities dating to the Byzantine empire. We were up very far into northern syria, near the mountains that mark the Turkish border. It was a gorgeous sunny day and a perfect time to be outside wandering around 1500 year old ruins. Our driver, Ibrahim, was really nice and took us to a couple of sites where we were climbing around on rocks and climbing down into creepy tombs. Very indiana jones. Then we headed back ... read more

Monday was a very long but eventful day of travel, hanging out at the border, and talking with lots of friendly syrians. We started the day with an excellent breakfast quesadilla-type things that seems popular in both Lebanon and Syria. It's just melted cheese in a fresh flat bread, made on a big circular grill-type thing. Then our hotel owner talked us out of trying to see sites on our way to the border at Damascus, which turned out to be a very good thing. So we set out in a minibus to Homs, just a bit north of the border in Syria. The drive through the Bekaa Valley was really interesting - the road is lined with little towns with buildings in various stages of building and decline - everything is made out of cement ... read more