Blogs from Aleppo, North, Syria, Middle East - page 9

After I found out the trip to Lebanon is next weekend, I decided to go to Aleppo this weekend. A couple of people said they might go but then backed out so I decided to go alone anyway. I headed out on Friday around 11am. It was a little later than I had wanted to but what's a guy to do. I got a taxi to the bus station and got a ticket for 100 Lira, or about $2 for the 5 hour trip. When I got on the bus it was hot, cramped, and uncomfortable. :( Anyway, after a long trip I finally arrived in Aleppo but then spent a couple of hours trying to find a hotel that had rooms and was in my price range. The last one I checked before I was ... read more

Geo: 36.1498, 37.6302We 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 ... read more

February 22, 2006 (Damascus, Syria) Shannon: From our current location, you can tell that we did eventually make it across to the Promised Land, or the country we call Syria. Who knew getting into this country would be such a hassle? After our failed attempts at the Syrian Embassy in Amman and our “storm the border” back-up plan, we were forced to move on to Plan C. We learned about this option from a fellow American we met at our hostel. Through a friend-of-a-friend sort of deal, he knew about an alternate way to get across the border: be invited. Evidently, tourism companies in Syria are able to secure you a special visa - I really can’t explain it, to be honest, because I still don’t understand it. Somehow the company makes you their “guest” and ... read more

Aleppo, Syria. This is my 6th day in Syria. Spent the first couple days in the desert town of Deir Ez-Zur, in the eastern side of the country, with the Euphrates river running through the middle of town. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly people are and how cheap everything is (comparing prices with Turkey, that is). People seeing me walking down the street would make me stop and drink tea with them, communicating with sign language and the few words of english they may know. Actually, the people on the street here seem to speak more english than their Turkish counterparts. The hotel I was staying in cost a whopping $4 for a single room (compare to the $10 I was paying in Turkey), had a really friendly manager, but no heating, which really ... read more

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