Palymra

So waking up bright and early I decided that maybe the hotel wasnt very good because it was 4 am and I was itching when my alarm finally went of at 6:30 I decided that I must of been a feast for either a mosquito or bed bugs!! I am still not sure which one it is but bloomin hell are the bites itchy!!

Met Imad and Sayed and drove of where we went to have breakfast - which was yummy it was slightly strange though because it was - fuul (which is beans, lemon, labneh and so on) very filling and yummy though! Picked up the French from a very posh looking hotel where I assume there were no bed bugs and set of to Apamea! On arriving at Apamea the Group went wondering and me and Sayed went to sit in the cafe waiting for them to return. Since my visit a week before prices had risen 50% which was pretty shocking so I had an expensive drink and chatted to the people there - mainly drivers and so on!

From here we drove through Hama and luckily we were able to stop at a Noria (waterwheel) that was outside the town and still turning before stopping a few times in Homs - I am not sure what was being looked at but I think it was looking at Baklava and so on!

We arrived at Palmyra having seen lots of signposts to Baghdad and Iraq around 3 ish and I merrily went to find myself a hotel. I checked into the Al Nakheel which was fabulous - I had a double bed, bathroom, satellite tv and air con for 350 SYP (4 English Pounds!) so I was very happy! Then went off to get some lunch.

The sunset should be viewed from the citadel and so I trudged of towards it thinking it looked close enough. Finally reached the bottom of the hill and saw a few nice little tracks that I could wander up but on asking a passing Syrian he pointed me around the corner so I carried on trekking and asked some more Syrians when I had gone around the corner and still had no view of the road where I should be going - they pointed to a random track and so up I started to walk! Halfway up I realised that I had quite an audience and that actually it was getting pretty sheer and tiring and I had obviously gone the wrong way! I finally got to the top of this dratted hill where at points I was having to clamber up using my hands and so on to stop me falling and met up with the French group who were all highly amused at the fact I had walked but even more amused by the fact that in true Camilla style I had picked the longest steepest most yucky route up!! Sunset was beautiful though there were a lot of touts offering numerous things this was mainly for the tour groups of which there were a lot and some of the touts even wanted to marry me!!

I head to Jordan today so better be going

xoxox

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