Blogs from Middle East - page 1171

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

In my previous posts I failed to mention that Augusta is pregnant again! :) Both her and Celeste are once again pregnant at the same time (though, not as clost together). Shawn and Augusta are already pretty excited. Shawn is already studying pregnancy stuff and bought a book for him and Augusta. Today, we went to another mall, shopped around, and then had lunch. The lunch area was covered with leaves (fake plant leaves) to give the feeling of being in the jungle (there were also some stuffed animals here and there), with fast food places lining the perimeter like you would see in the U.S. From there we went back home, Augusta and Kai took a short nap, and Shawn and I went to a hardward store for the metal/foil tubing that connects the dryer ... read more

Today (Aprıl 13th) was a fairly quiet day spent in Selcuk. Early in the morning a large group went to the Bella Pension where the pension operators also run a quality carpet shop. Everyone had been invited to their hotel for breakfast on the rooftop terrace with views overlooking the ruins of St. John's Basıllıca and Selcuk. After breakfast everyone went to the carpet shop where Urdell (one of the operators) spent a couple hours explaınıng carpets. Theır hıstory, how to tell qualıty, types of materıal, (cotton,wool,sılk) and dıfferent trıbal desıgns. The next few hours were ''spent lookıng at carpets''. Those who dıd not go to breakfast were tryıng to catch up on travel blogs, e-maıls, and sort out technıcal aspects of card readers, memory cards, and Turkısh keyboards. Plus all those helpful Mıcrosoft wındows show ... read more

Geo: 35.1608, 37.0257Tonight we would be staying in a really romantic location, Fahed got quite excited each time he told us about it. We reached Krak mid-morning and went to the castle. The castle is called Krak Des Chevaliers and was built in 1031ish. It is considered to be the greatest fortress in the world and sits on a 650 metre high cliff. Fahed gave us a tour of the castle, which meant that we power walked through it all and stopped in the shade when he wanted to tell us something. It is strange that a Syrian hated standing in the sun. It was an unreal castle. Really huge and most of it was not closed to the public. We had a great view up here of the surrounding villages. On a clear day it ... read more

Just at the end of my Turkey adventures now, and in a bit of a dire place called Kuşadası; a horrible sprawled concrete hotel and british holiday apartment package tour town near Samos (where I start my island hopping tomorrow). The weather is great though. Yes I let the weather decide my route for the next month. Looking north it is still a bit grim. Looking west it should be all sun and smiles. So it's Greece then Italy most probably. Anyway, where was I... Yes Antalya and the Turquoise coast. Antalya was nice enough - I just organised myself a little there, checked the online job market in Europe briefly. Had a nice encounter with some locals on arrival. I asked for directions to my pansiyon which led to a 15 minute adventure with other ... read more