The Ade Syria Tour - Day 4 - Crak des Chevailiers & Tartus

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Well this morning’s shower in Palmyra was very interesting. I couldn’t get the water to turn on first of all, and bearing in mind that this is meant to be a 5 star hotel one would expect that the water would turn on. Of course it is the low season and we were the only guests in the hotel so maybe they haven’t been keeping the maintenance up. When I finally managed to coax some water out of the shower nozzle, then wall started making this noise like a sub machine gun, and then shower nozzle started jumping and leaping around. I was a little worried that the entire wall was going to fall down. It was so loud that I was sure that someone was going to start banging on the hotel room door to find out how I was killing in the room with the uzi that I had smuggled into the country.

After finally getting myself clean I stumbled out of the room to go in search of some breakfast. In true Middle Eastern style the food that was given to us by the hotel was ‘interesting’. This morning we were offered cucumber, tomatoes, olives, yoghurt, apricots, stewed peaches and pears and some stale croissants. Not the worlds most appetising breakfast, and after two days of glorious breakfasts at the four seasons hotel a little bit of a let down.

Abdul picked us up nice and early again (8am) and we set off from Palmyra to go towards Homs and Tartus. Our big destination of the day was the Crak de Chevailiers that it situated between Homs and Tartus.

The road up to the castle is really quite insane, all narrow lanes and hair pin turns that are only just big enough to take one car, let alone the cars, trucks, bicycles, cows, goats and school children that were all trying to go up the hill to the castle at the same time. There is actually quite a large settlement under the castle these days, and it is rather hard to work out how they all support themselves. To be fair we were visiting Crak in the very low season so in the high tourist season it is probably a little bit more obvious how everyone gets by.

The reason we now it is now the low season is because we only saw four other groups of people the entire time that we were at the Crak. Of course this could also have something to do with the fact that is was absolutely freezing cold on the top of this hill, blowing a hoolie and also raining. I mean no on e in their right mind would volunteer to be up on the battlements of a castle in that kind of weather (unless the king had ordered them to). But no, we were there by choice. And I must say that it really was quite spectacular. The castle walls themselves are a sight to be seen. There are two major parts to the castle. The section that was built by the Mamlukes and the parts that were built by the crusaders. The castle has a very chequered history and has been taken and retaken a few times. It has also suffered a large number of earthquakes, some of them nearly destroying the entire castle. My particular favourite parts of the castle where the old church (which was also used as a mosque once it was conquered) where our guide sang to us and you could hear the sound reverberating around the inside of the building, and the old parliament meeting hall where you could just see the splendour of old. It was quite easy to imagine what it must have looked like with stained glass windows in the holes and the ceiling plastered and painted. It would have looked spectacular.

Our guide for the castle was wonderful and showed us so many places that we wouldn’t have found by ourselves. We saw the old public restrooms (check out the photos) the stables, the kitchens, the secret passage ways in and out of the castle, the command room and the barracks (amongst others). Dad also managed to find a place to bash his head and cut it open (through his beanie). He really is quite talented how he can manage to hit his head in places where you would have to be an idiot to not be able to see the obstacle.

Once we had finished our castle tour we had lunch at a little restaurant next door to the castle. We were so pleased to be able to go inside after all that time at the castle. The castle was amazing but the weather was really not all that hospitable to be outside in. The café even had little gas burners going to warm you up and we had a table right beside one of these. YAY! Lunch was a feast. We must have ended up with at least 15 plates of food on the table. There was a fantastic new dish that I hadn’t seen before, roasted potatoes with pomegranate juice and garlic. It was yum. I of course had my usual starter of lentil soup with pita bread. While mum just ate the pita bread as her tummy wasn’t feeling so good after eating a ton of dates yesterday.

Following lunch we set of for Tartus, but I must admit that I won’t be able to describe much of that journey as in the warmth of the car and after having eaten a big meal I kinda fell asleep. I only woke up again when we arrived in Tartus. And joy of joys, the sun was shining in Tartus. We had escaped the cloud and fog!


After checking us into our hotel Abdul picked dad and I back up from the hotel (mum electing to stay in the hotel room and sit in the sun) and took us to look at the Tartus Cathedral (Or the Lady of Tortous). It is obviously an old Christian cathedral and it now houses one of the most boring museums that I have ever been into. It took us about 5 minutes to walk around it and then we were done.

The hotel that we were staying in was most interesting. I tried to have a bath, and it was lovely, I had a great bath. However the problem was that when I tried to pull the plug out of the bath I couldn’t get it out. I tried to get dad to pull it out as well but he also couldn’t get it out of the bath. We even stole a knife from the restaurant and tried to use that to get the plug out, but it still wouldn’t come out. We finally ended up just leaving the bath full of water all night. The next classic event that happened was when we were sitting up on the 14th floor having dinner when the lights went out….. again. We are starting to think that it must be something about the Ade family and trying to eat that makes the power go out.

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Photos

Catapult stones
ready for action

Descending into the secret passageway
of the Krak