Cyprus Leaking water pumps, motorbike crashes. hospitals and dental surgery behind me (I hope!), I finally set off from Nicosia on Sunday 22nd November for a short first leg over to Northern Cyprus, planning to stay with friends and try and chill out a bit before catching the ferry to Turkey on Monday morning. I wasn't only leaving all that negative, trip delaying crap behind either... 5 years of living in Cyprus has built up some fantastic friendships and it was all pretty emotional packing the last little bits on the bike and saying goodbyes. All I can say is I'll [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Thursday morning, we got up early to head to Crac de Chavelliers, which is a really interesting site a couple of hours from Hama. We ate breakfast at the hotel, but should have known better, because Ibrahim stopped at this roadside stand with a circular pit oven, where two women were making extremely good breakfast sandwiches. We were stuffed, but have learned the hard way that syrians will not take no for an answer when it comes to offering food. And more food, and more food... reminds me a lot of my Italian relatives. :) We got to see how [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dg 242. Siden vi skulle paa heldagstur idag, maatte vi opp forholdsvis tidlig. Vi skulle kjore kl. 08.30, saa vi spiste frokost paa hotellet. Istedenfor guidet tur hadde vi leid sjaafor med bil - i regi fra hotellet. Det var fast pris paa bilen pr. dag, alt etter hvor langt man skulle kjore. Det var 2 tyske jenter som skulle dele bil med oss, saa vi betalte 1 600 SP. Til forskjell fra turen vi hadde faatt pris paa i Aleppo (6 000 SP) var dette en ganske god pris - selv om vi naa reiste uten guide. Mange av stedene [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dag 240 og 241. Vi bestilte frokost paa rommet, en veldig behagelig maate aa starte dagen paa. Vi tok drosje til bussterminalen og betalte betraktelig mindre enn det vi gjorde til hotellet (det er alltid saa vanskelig aa vite hva det koster naar man kommer paa nye steder, og drosjesjaaforene utnytter veldig ofte dette). Da vi kom til terminalen var det en kar som spurte hvor vi skulle, og henviste oss til rett busselskap da vi sa Hama. Vi skjonte ingenting av det som sto paa billetten, det eneste vi visste var at bussen skulle gaa kl. 12 og at det [View Full Entry]

---

---

We got up this morning and went in search of breakfast. It was almost a fruitless search as there was noone in the restaurant that we could easily find . However on a second attempt we managed to rouse somebody and they actually ended serving us up the most delightful breakfast (although mum absolutely hated it). Dad and I both had a truly lovely omelette, followed up by some cornflakes. Mum has steadfastly refused to use the milk in Syria as she cannot find out whether or not it is pasteurised, so instead she has been putting bottle water onto her [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 29 Today we woke up to Xmas day in the Sheraton Hotel. It was a lovely hotel and all was very normal in the hotel which was quite a change for us on this holiday in Syria. We had a lovely pre - Xmas Dinner in the Italian restaurant at the Sheraton on Xmas Eve. I have to talk about a funny thing that happened to us at the Souk yesterday. We were discussing price with one of the stall holders when he suddenly said to us “do you speak English” I said “ I am English” he looked at [View Full Entry]

---

---

We had a "free morning" to explore the town of Hama. Unfortunately I still needed to sort out my money so spent the time in an internet cafe and then persuaded the tour guide to sort out a pay phone for me. Good job he did because (a) I could not find it (it was on the wall in the street outside a shop) and (b) to get it to work I needed a chap to fish coins out of the coin box and then feed them back in to the slot while I discussed the issue, at length, with my [View Full Entry]

---

---

The next morning we found that more than half the group had got food poisoning from the meal the night before. Luckily my fussy-ness meant that I escaped and I went out to find another fruit juice from the nearby bar. We caught a bus down to Hama with people being sick every so often. Not a great journey, but I was very glad I had avoided the bug. To get us in the mood for our destination we watched "Kingdom of Heaven" as we travelled south. I couldn't hear much of it, but it certainly got me in the right [View Full Entry]

---

---

Early start to get to the bus station when arrived though there were no buses. One of the locals advised me that the bus station had moved to near the motorway so I had to get a service taxi. On the way I am sure that the driver tried to offer me his wife to which I politefully declined - arab hospitality is great but I think that is going a bit too far. As opposed to the nearly 2 hour wait in the Beirut bus station amongst the garbage and flies my 15 minute wait in air conditioned luxury was [View Full Entry]

---

---

The traumatic start to this weekend’s trip was our own doing! After successfully bartering down a taxi to the bus station to 100 SP for the first time ever, we found we had both forgotten our passports. You need them to buy tickets so we had to get a taxi home again to collect them!!! Once we got to Hama routine kicked in. We had another chicken shwarma from what we consider to be the best kebab stall in Syria. It didn’t disappoint. Then we took a taxi to the Riad Hotel where we were very lucky to get a room. [View Full Entry]

---

---