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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After living in Syria for over six weeks we finally got round to exploring some more of the country in our holidays last week, when Becka, Everitte and I set off all alone to travel to Palmyra and up the Euphrates to Aleppo. We had had rather a late night the evening before our departure due to meeting up with a couple of English guys we met in Lattakia who turned out to be great company and one of whom, James, worked for a human rights organisation in Serbia and was full of useful information and fascinating stories. We met up [View Full Entry]

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"What time is the bus?...How much?" is pretty much what my life revolves around right now. I was thinking today as i was walking through the desert, i have no clue whats being going on in the outside world! All i care about is .... my next bus trip, what time the bus is coming, where im going to eat, what am i going to eat, do i have enough water for the day ahead, maybe i should buy some more fruit!...Travelling is really a self centered lifestyle ! I LOVE IT! AHAH! Palmyra was in ancient times an important city [View Full Entry]

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DAY 47 This morning is a free day in Damascus. We take our time and then head off for Francine to pay and collect her jewellery. Love it and bought another ring as a gift. We head off in taxis for the public intercity bus station. We have booked seats and are off to Palmyra in the northern desert. 3 ½ hours later we arrive in the centre of the Syrian desert. We stay at a quaint hotel and would have been beautiful in the 1950's when first built. You can still see a lot of the art deco finishes. We [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Dag 245. I dag skulle vi til Palmyra, ca. 130 km ost for Hama. Vi spiste ikke frokost paa hotellet, men kjopte med oss kjeks og vann som vi hadde underveis. Bytte av sjaafor og bil idag - en forholdsvis ny Hundai. Vi var tilsammen 5 i bilen - sjaaforen, en koreaner (husker ikke navn), en australier (Jamie) og oss to. Forste stopp var Shamamis-fortet. Fortet var bygd av en arabisk familie, Shamis Gram fra Homs - det 1. aarhundre f.Kr. Det ble lagt i ruin av et jordskjelv i 618 e.Kr. Kongen av Homs bygget det opp igjen i 1229, [View Full Entry]

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Day 3 of the trip was cool. Literally. It is freezing here. So unbelievably cold. I can’t believe how cold it has been here. Much colder than home in NZ. Day 3 saw us get up in Damascus bright and early. Mum and Dad were up at 6:30am for breakfast at the restaurant. I managed to get down there for 7:00am. Abdul picked us up at 8:00am and off we set for Palmyra. The first stop for the day was actually at Palmyra. Just before lunch we went to see some old tombs. In particular we saw the tomb towers and [View Full Entry]

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Day 25 We left Damascus at 8am for the desert town of Palmyra. The trip down was uneventful in that once we had left the smog of Damascus we drove into a rainy fog all the way to Palmyra. Yes this is the desert and it obviously does rain as we have the photos to prove it. It has also been perishingly cold, so cold that I still can’t feel my feet as I write this blog. On the way out of Damascus we passed through what was called the Workers City, it was such a depressing place with all the [View Full Entry]

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Day 25 Palmyra Ruins, I took so many photos on Day 25 that the blog has had to be divided into two blogs. The photographs in this blog are solely about the ruins of Palmyra. I mentioned the history of these ruins in the previous blog. We have just come back from dinner in Palmyra. Guess what, the power once again went out while we were in the middle of dinner and we couldn’t see a thing. It was really so funny and seems to happen daily in Syria. It doesn’t seem to trouble the local people they just crank up [View Full Entry]

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Today was the tour of Syria's "star" attraction, the desert city of Palmyra (Tadmor) which had a rather lengthy classical history and then faded away after the second century AD. Situated on an a water supply in eastern Syria, the "palm' bit of the modern name comes from the palm trees growing nearby. Original huh? It was fairly chilly when we started at 8am with a guided tour of the central areas of the site. The long processional route had been restored quite a bit, but this simply helped to give an idea of how impressive it would have been for [View Full Entry]

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