Staying in the heart of the Bazaar

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Geo: 36.1498, 37.6302

We woke up to the beautiful view of the castle and jumped on the bus. I got the back seat, put my feet up and settled in for my sleep. A few hours later we arrived in Aleppo. It is a big city, feels a bit like Cairo and we were staying in the heart of the city, in the middle of the bazaar. The bus couldn't drive to the hotel, but there was a ute to take our bags to the hotel for us. We saw them roughly through the bags on the dirty ute. There goes all those delicate souvenirs!! After a few minutes of walking through the bazaar we came to our hotel. Our rooms weren't ready, so we had a brief tour of the city. Fahed walked us through the bazaar. We walked past lots of hanging meat, smoked sheep heads, carcasses, livers, etc. not much of it was refrigerated- bit of a worry, hope our meat isn't bought from these butchers. There are also lots of soap stores, material, traditional clothing. At the end of the bazaar we came to the city's castle, which we are going to visit tomorrow.
Back at the hotel they prepared lunch for us- we were not impressed. He said it was going to be pizza's, it was pita bread with cheese in the middle, or sesame on top, or mince meat on bread. Very boring and unappealing. Served with a salad of tomatoes and cucumber, which we are so over. At least twice a day on this tour we have been served cucumber and tomato!!
The afternoon was free, so we went for a hunt for an ATM. Lots of locals were willing to help by sending us in different directions with no luck. This city has a lack of ATM's and we wished we had been warned by Fahed, then we would have got cash out before arriving here. We also wandered around the bazaar and somehow we didn't get lost.
Fahed arranged for us to go a restaurant for dinner. It was excellent food, just what we needed and it was not an alcohol free restaurant. We ended the night with drinks on the roof until we were told to keep it down, the only option we had was to go to bed.

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Photos

01 Baggage handlers
This is how our luggage was transported from our minibus to our hotel. We attracted quite a crowd!

02 Local butcher
This is one of the butchers in the bazaar. Whatever time you come, there will always be meat here for sale. Refrigeration? What´s that?

03 The castle
The castle entrance

04 Way back
To get back to the hotel we had to walk through this entrance of the bazaar.

05 Chandelier
A huge, gorgeous chandelier

06 Market stalls
Some of the repetitive stalls in the bazaar

07 Yuck!!
Some of the butcher's wares for sale.

08 What a struggle!
Hope he doesn't have far to go!