Qala'at Samaan and Dead Cities, the tour

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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 to Aleppo to see the citadel, which was enormous and really interesting, before heading out to Hama. It turns out Ibrahim's wife is from Hama, so he gave us a good deal on driving us down to Hama and then taking us the next day to go see Crac de Chavelliers, which is a big crusader castle. It didn't sound very easy to get from Hama to Crac by public transport, so we figured it made sense, though we both prefer taking buses to private cars. Also, Ibrahim and his wife are both super nice and know all the good spots for falafel and cheese breakfast sandwiches. We had an amazing falafel sandwich on our way to Hama - with the falafel not in a ball, but in a donut. Much better for chickpea distribution. And, it had delicious cabbage and mint and tomatoes inside... best falafel either of us has ever had.

We really love Hama, which is a much smaller and much more laid-back city than Haleb, with about 1 milliion people. Tonight we wandered all around the City, into the souks, and along the river, which has waterwheels that are at least as old as the 4th century AD. We went to buy a needle and thread, which somehow didn't make it into my backpack, so I could fix a tear in ryan's pants and my sweater. Then we wandered into a mall, where we window shopped and I tried on some pants. Everyone here is super friendly and we felt totally comfortable and relaxed wandering through the souks for a couple of hours. We had some pretty amazing sweets today - the first was a cheese-on-cheese roll thing, with a brined cheese on the outside and then a cheese custard on the inside. Then we had a nougat thing with coconut on the bottom and pistachios and almonds on top. Pistachios grow all around here, so they are in everything -- yum. The nicest part was walking along the main pedestrian shopping area - each city seems to have one of these, with tons of families out shopping and walking.

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