Damascus, Maalula and Bosra

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After saying goodbye to my Habibi (sweetheart) in Amman, I grabbed a "service" (shared taxi) from Amman to Damascus. I had a little trouble at the border (I was supposed to get a visa at home, but decided to try my luck) and nearly got left there by my driver, but I eventually arrived in Damascus no worse for wear and checked into the Al Rabie hostel (a beautiful 600 year old house).

Damascus is argued as being the world's oldest continually inhabited city, and the walled old city here has more character than every city I've been to put together! Tiny winding streets and alleys, houses overhang the alleys supported by wooden stilts, and seemingly ancient wooden doors on most places! There are countless streets of souqs, cobblestones everywhere and the largest and most intricate mosque I've ever been in.

From Damascus, I made two daytrips. The first was to Maalula, which is one of only three villages in the world where the language of Jesus (Aramaic) is still spoken. It was a quaint little town at the base of some large cliffs. The second daytrip I made was to the ancient basalt (black volcanic rock for you non-geologeeks) village. The really interesting part was to see that the locals still lived in the ruins. I was invited into the home of one of the locals, and spent some time chatting (mostly sign language considering their english was about as good as my arabic) and drinking tea with them. Part of the ruins is a massive 15000 seat Roman amphitheatre, which was quite breathtaking! Equally interesting was wandering alone through the dark oppressive hallways beneath the theatre.

This was the ideal start to a country and it was hard to leave, but I couldn't pass up the chance to make my way into Lebanon, so I headed off to Beirut with Felipe (the guy Bonnie and I shared a cab in Jordan with as I happened to run into him in Damascus). We are planning on popping back into Syria from the north of Lebanon after a week or two...

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