Greetings from Aleppo!
Just a brief update seeing that the computers here are prehistoric.
First off, Syria is quite lovely. The people are EXTREMELY nice and go way out of their way to show hospitality. Bananas, cookies, falafels,
and pancakes are thrown in our faces daily followed by a grinning Syrian wondering where we are from and our state of health. It's quite unlike the dangerous Middle East the media portrays. Extremists and terrorists do not prowl the streets nor have we seen any other bogeymen. Outside the Umayyad Mosque (4th holiest Muslim site, I believe) veiled women asked have their pictures taken with us :) More to come on the Mosque when time is not limited, quite an experience. PARENTS READ THIS: We are very safe, unless driving in a 'van' but that's another story. We do get an occasional shock reaction when we reveal we're Americans with one of my favorite responses being "Really, REALLY? Whhhat? You are kidding, really...from America?" Another young man simply put "It's not your fault" (regarding politics, namely Bush). The people here separate politics from civilians very well and we have had no ill welcome. The only creepy thing is pictures of the president, Bashar al-Assad, displayed EVERYWHERE.
Backtracking, we hung out in Damascus a few days a go and this city has been my favorite thus far (followed closely by Cairo). Very beautiful, both in the decor (e.g. mosques, vine draped lattices, mosaics), food, music, and people. Nearly every shop in the gorgeous and non-harassing Souq al-Hamiddiyya I visited invited me to stay for tea. For the record, there are 55 million shops in this "mall". One of the most memorable moments was embarking on a Turkish bath. Unlike the male baths, women are butt ass naked and after a steam room sit & chat, all the women in our intrepid group were vigorously rubbed down by a lady wearing an exfoliating glove, front and back, laying vulnerable on the bathhouse floor, followed by a quick massage. I got scolded for the piles of dirt the lady rubbed off me.
NB: Saving money is fairly easy in Syria, seeing that alcohol consumption is frowned upon and booze is heavily tax + everything shuts down at 9 p.m. Not a party country by any means.
Following Damascus, we traveled via public bus to Palmyra, a true desert oasis. En route we passed several signs indicating the way to Iraq, we were a little over a hour drive away from the Iraqi border. Very very very very weird. And don't worry parents, we are far from the border now :) Anywho- Palmyra is my favorite ruined city/site. Once an elaborate Roman city with a temple dating back to the first century AD was used to worship gods like Bel, then converted to a Christian church then a Mosque with evidence of all three. The history runs ridiculously deep in Syria.
From Palmyra, we visited Krac des Chevaliers, the "finest castle in the world" according to TE Lawrence. This castle was never breached and is the perfect example of what a crusader castle should be; external and internal moats, draw bridges, secret passageways, cisterns, holes to drop boiling hot oil on the enemies, a round-table, the list goes on.
Pretty much out of time, we are in Aleppo (where local bakers last night invited the four of us to help them make pancakes in which we drew a very large crowd), headed for Turkey tomorrow!!!
