Amman

On Sunday, we headed off to Amman and Jordan. We were again in a local bus (again a comfortable coach).

We arrived and got our bearings. We had a felafel roll from the local vendor (an interesting variant that also included chips and grilled eggplant in the roll). This was followed by a stroll downtown. This is a 30 minute walk (downhill). The downtown is simply various streets with open shops selling textiles and various other items - we found it hard to find a coffee, but succeeded.

Amman is widely spread over about 35 hills (the number continues to grow). The environment is dry and the area is rolling stony hills with no vegetation. The hilly environment and spread-out nature of the city discourages walking as a means of getting around.

Amman is growing fast. While the downtown is a bit tired, there are new suburbs springing up and significant redevelopment. The road systems are very good. There is clearly plenty of money around (though there is probably a bit of space between the poor and the rich). There are lots of fancy cars around. All this means that prices are quite high (higher than Syria) - probably about equivalent to Australia (except for much more expensive alcohol and much cheaper cigarettes).

Berna was unwell, so she had KFC delivered to the room (Amman is much more 'western' than Damascus). Michael went o the Books@Cafe restaurant - a good restaurant with a fine view, but an interesting trip requiring a walk downhill and then finding a way uphill (including finding a way up many flights of steps in little light).

On Monday, the group headed off for a walking trip, starting with the citadel. There is little left other than some columns and low ruins, but the small museum is noteworthy because it has some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were worth seeing (see picture).

We walked down the hill to the Roman Theatre, which is well preserved. It has two small adjacent Folklore and Costume museums.

In the afternoon, Michael and others took taxis out to Jerash (about 1 hour drive). Jerash is the ruins of a Roman provincial town. The main street, the two theatres, the Hippodrome and various temples and fountains are well preserved. We also saw a 'chariot race' in the Hippodrome - three chariots raced as part of a show.

For dinner, we took taxis to the Blue Fig Cafe, all brilliantly organized by Eileen.. This cafe attracts the trendy younger people in Amman. The vibe was great, the menu interesting and the food very good.

Damascus

On Friday, we broke with the traditional breakfast of tomato, cucumber and boiled egg. Lydia had arranged for the Pancake Kitchen in Palmyra to open for us and many of the group decided that a change to some form of pancake was well worthwhile. Favourites included banana and chocolate varieties.

We then took a local bus from Palmyra to Damascus, which is about a 3.5 hour drive. The local bus is a comfortable coach. The trip is largely through desert, generally featureless, with scattered low vegetation and occasional buildings or wayside stops and that pass by without comment.

As it was Friday, Damascus was very quiet - most of the city was closed and there was little traffic.

We went to an Islamic Centre - basically a very large educational institute associated with a mosque and had a meeting with four of the staff and scholars there. We were invited to ask questions about Islam and we were given a very polite and friendly reception.

Afterwards, we walked from our hotel to the Old Town area. While most of this was closed, we did manage to get our bearings and to visit the Azem Palace. This was a luxurious Damascus house in the late 18th century (it was the Governor's House). Like much Muslim architecture, it was peaceful, with excellent courtyards and water features and finely decorated rooms.

For dinner, we decided to go the the Neutron Restaurant, which was in the Christian Quarter of the Old Town, most distant from our hotel. We armed ourselves with the destination written in Arabic and sallied forth. Of course, our taxi driver got lost, so we abandoned him and found another. It was all fun and we found the restaurant, which provided good food and some good Lebanese wine.

On Saturday, we set off to see the Old Town. We wandered all round. With the group, we visited the large Umayyad Mosque. This is a popular destination, particularly with very large groups of Iranian tourists (which seem to mainly consist of women clothed in black cloth wrap-around cloaks or shawls that cover their heads and body. The Iranians are Shia (most Syrians are Sunni) and they have slightly different practices. The Mosque is an important site for all Muslims (they believe that the Second Coming of Jesus will be to a minaret at this mosque), and particularly for Shia, as the relics of one of their early martyrs is here.

The mosque itself is large. The group sat inside and Bernadette started a discussion on the role of women in Islam. She claims that it was tiring sitting, so she stood up and continued the discussion. At least she can say that she has preached in a mosque.

We continued to ramble. We had a good lunch at a restaurant in the Christian Quarter (which meant that we could have a beer also). The Old Town is quite large and is a maze of streets, alleys and cul-de-sacs. There is on straight street (which was called Straight Street in antiquity and is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles).

It was Nico's last night so the group from Turkey went to a special farewell dinner. Nico dressed from his extensive wardrobe of Arabic clothing; he looked just like a local sheik. Our restaurant had a great view over the city and a great view of the large thunderstorm that started as we finished. We had to find a path back to our hotel that avoided the flooding in the Old Town streets, due to the volume and scale of the rain. We were told that it was the heaviest rain for five years.

Palmyra

The next day (Wednesday) we had another walk further afield in the town of Hama. The local museum has a superb mosaic floor from a nearby excavation. We grabbed a quick fast food bite (some sort of pizza roll and a delicious chicken donar) before we piled into a mini-bus and headed for the town bus station. At 12:15, we took the comfortable local bus for the 3 hour trip to Palmyra, via Homs.

The scenery changes quickly from fields to desert - mainly sand and scattered low-lying bushes.

Isolated tent camps (Bedouin) pass by, along with a large airbase, surrounded by radar posts and anti-aircraft guns.

We arrived at Palmyra about 4 pm and sorted out ourselves in the hotel. Palmyra is a small town, set among low hills in an otherwise flat desert. It is an oasis - the town is surrounded by walled fields of date palms and olives.

Adjacent to the town are the ruins of ancient Palmyra. At 5 pm the group had a guided tour of the Temple of Baal. This is a large walled court area with a central temple area. It had been restored to some extent and much remains. It would have been quite magnificent in 150 A.D. at the height of Palmyra's power and wealth. Palmyra was a Roman ally and colony, whose wealth came as a key city on the Silk Road - its people were merchants and caravans passed through the city (and paid taxes to do so). When its queen, Zenobia, got over-ambitious and took on Rome, Emperor Aurelian defeated their armies, captured the queen and sent the place into terminal decline, so that over time it was partially covered by the desert sands.

We had dinner at the Traditional Palmyra restaurant - a traditional Bedouin dish of lamb and peanuts on a mound of rice.

On Thursday, we headed out early (another rattling minibus), firstly to the tower tombs at the outskirts. These are mausoleums, built as towers of up to fours levels by wealthy families, with bodies stacked in layers. We saw one of the largest (it could hold about 280 bodies). We had to be early, as the tower is closed by about 8.30 am. We then went on to an underground burial crypt (Palmyrenes used both tower and underground tombs), which was also open for only a brief time. This had some interesting wall frescoes. We then went to another underground crypt which isn't normally open to tourists (I think that our guide and our tour leader used some influence or some bakseech here). While this has no frescoes, it is larger and much better preserved, including the bas-relief sculptures of the deceased used to seal their casket 'slots'.

From there we went to the city ruins. On the way, we stopped briefly to photograph the street sign at the town's edge with gives directions to Damascus and Iraq - we are probably about 120 km from Iraq as the crow flies. We walked the length of the main street, which is lined with columns (and also with locals selling scarves, jewellery, along with a couple of local youths on camels). Our local guide was excellent. The city was big and clearly prosperous. There is even a wonderful example of a Roman round-about where two streets cross (a beautiful structure of four groups of four columns, called a Tetrapylon). The city stadium is just near the main street and has been well restored. Other ruins (temples, baths, the agora etc) are visible to varying degrees of completeness.

After lunch and a rest, we briefly walked out into the oasis area. These are largely walled plots of old olive trees and date palms, with channels for irrigation (empty when we were there).

For exercise, the group walked up the nearby hill to watch the sunset over the ruins. This is quite a climb, to an Arab fortress perched on the top. While the haze meant the view wasn't exceptional, the exercise certainly was worthwhile.

We had dinner at the Traditional Palmyra Restaurant (again), which was good.

Crac des Chevaliers and Hama

On Tuesday, we piled into a small bus and had a 2 hour drive to Hama (for a stop) and then a further 1 hour on to Crac des Chevaliers. This is a large Crusader fort built from 1142 to 1271, with later additions, which is very well preserved and occupies a stunning location on a hill overlooking valleys below. We toured the fortress, climbing over the walls and towers. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We followed with a large chicken lunch at a nearby restaurant with a great view of the Crac. The fortress is really stunning.

We rode back to Hama to our hotel. Hama is apparently the most conservative town is Syria, but is was very quite when we arrived at 4:30 pm. We had a short walk through the older part of the town to see some of the norias on the river. A noria is an old wooden water wheel (up to 20m diameter), designed to raise river water to an stone aquaduct, from where it flows to the fields. There are numbers of these norias along the river.

To Syria - Aleppo

On Sunday we travelled to Syria. We left Iskenderun and travelled a short distance by minibus to Antakya. Antakya is the site of ancient Antioch, which was a very major city in the Roman era. We stopped in Antakya to look around the local museum, which has an excellent collection of mosaic floors found from local sites. We had time to grab a quick snack and then we headed to the outskirts of the city. There we said farewell to Gurjan, our Turkish guide, and packed into two small taxis which were to take the eight of across across the Syrian border to Aleppo.

The ride was interesting, if a little hair-raising. As you come to the border area, you see lots of barbed wire and guard-posts, but all the guard-posts are on the Turkish side. We had our documents checked out of Turkey and then we drove on about three kilometers to the Syrian entry point. There we went through the same procedure - with no haste, but no hassles. A further hour brought us to Aleppo, where the taxi drivers managed to find our hotel.

Aleppo is a city of 4 million and is the commercial capital of Syria. It is a very ancient city. Some claim that it is the oldest inhabited city on Earth (people from Damascus dispute this) and was one of the major end points for the Silk Road. It is clearly dirtier and more "Middle-Eastern" then we found in Turkey. We met our guide who took us to the ATM, the felafel stand and then guided us to the entry gate of the souk. The entry gate is part of the old walled city and is called the Antioch Gate (it was the gate leading to Antioch).

The Antioch Gate leads into the souk, a very large and old covered market area of numerable streets and alleys filled with merchants of all kinds. Men push handcarts of goods (crying "beep beep" to get by), meat of all sorts hangs from racks, the air is filled with the scent of spices, black garbed women in groups seek out bargains, local boys approach to try their English and a donkey is led through laden with goods. This is as it has been for hundreds of years. The shops for various goods seem to be clustered together - a spice section, a gold jewellery section, a bridal section - everything you could want. The main "street" of the souk continues for 1.5 km and ends at the ancient Citadel of the city, a large fortification on a very high circular mound.

We continued our wanderings in the souk and found an exhibition on the restoration of this old town housed in a beautiful building which was once a Franciscan school. From there we went to see the Grand Mosque, an old and well restored building. Syrians are really friendly and seem to look to help and welcome tourists without hassling them to buy carpets or whatever. At the mosque a young man said hello and insisted on guiding me into the mosque, including ensuring that I saw the relic of Zacharias (John the Baptist`s Father) and praying at it.

We had an evening briefing from our guide and met the other eight people who have now joined us. We are now a group of 16. Our guide Bashar ("call me Beesh") then took us to a local restaurant.

On Monday, we decided to forego the optional trip to the ruins of St Simeon's Basilica and took ourselves off to explore. We looked around the old Christian area and looked in on Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches. This is an area of winding narrow streets, but seems to be very well kept and very clean. We continued our wanderings and eventually found the citadel. We did the tour - it's a large fortification (much ruined by an earthquake in the 1800's), which is being excavated and restored. It has excellent views of the city.

We had a look at an ancient Khan, which is part of the souk area. A Khan is an inn of sorts, or a caravanserai. Merchants would travel with their goods on camels and stay at the khan - the camels are tied in the enclosed central courtyard, with storage areas on the ground level and accommodation on the upper level. At night, the gates would be barred against robbers.

We had a good lunch at the Bazaar d'Charq Retaurant and continued to wander. We found the Baron Hotel, which is now much faded but which was the place for important people to stay (Agatha Christie wrote part of Murder on the Orient Express here, Lawrence of Arabia stayed and didn't pay his bill, Charles Lindberg, Kingsford-Smith and De Gaulle all stayed). We had a G&T in the bar, just so we could connect with the past glories.

We collected some drinks (not easy!!) and had a small cocktail party on our room terrace before we went to the evening briefing, followed by a meal.

While Syrian people are extremely friendly, the Syrian government clearly exercises a significant measure of control. There are pictures of the President and his predecessor (his late father) absolutely everywhere. Annoyingly for me, Syria blocks access to Blogspot (and Facebook and lots more) - I've finally worked out how to get around this enough to put up some belated details of our travels.

Iskenderun

On Saturday, we had the by now numbingly consistent Turkish breakfast of bread, tomatoes, cucumber and a hard-boiled egg, along wıth the Turkish tea (çay - which we have really learned to like).

We left Cappodocia and travelled for 6 hours by mini-bus to Iskenderun, which is on the coast near Syria. While this was our third crossing of the Taurus Mountains, the roads were generally very good wıth none of the excitment of the ride over the mountains from Pamukkale to Dalyan.

Iskenderun isn't really a tourist town (it is an industrial and port city of about 220,000), but we had a good hotel in the centre of the town. We had a wander around the town and had a look at the harbour and the shops. The town seems quite prosperous.

This was our last night in Turkey.

Cappadocıa

On Tuesday we drove to the coastal city of Antalya in the morning (about 3 hours). We had the afternoon looking around this cıty.

The weather was poor, with fairly constant rain. We took the tram out to the museum. This was good, wıth many items from nearby sites (particularly Perge), including some excellent sculptures and sarcophagi.

We had poor coffee and good pastries - which seems to be the Turkish norm. To stay dry, we went to the Old Bazaar for the obligatory browsing and shopping.

After a rushed dinner, we took a shuttle to the bus station and boarded our overnight bus. This wasn't too bad as we seemed to get some sleep and arrived ın Cappadocia the next morning (Wednesday) at about 7 o'clock. Another shuttle took us from the bus station at Nesagyır to our hotel ın Urgup. Luckily our rooms were available. We have three nights here.

After a rest, we all trooped off to the Turkish bath (hamman) to be heated, steamed, scrubbed, washed and pummelled. All good fun and quite relaxing.

The day remained overcast, with intermittent showers. We had a good Turkish pizza for lunch, and then had a rest to compensate for the lost sleep overnight. Dinner was at a restaurant specialising in grills - a good meal but reasonably expensive by local standards.

The next day (Thursday) the group had a minibus. We travelled first to drop us off for a two hour walk ın the Red Valley. This was an excellent walk - while it was overcast, the rain stayed away and we had the walk to ourselves. We saw many examples of the typical eroded peaks of Cappodicia, along with cave dwellings and the numerous alcoves crated for the pigeons. Apparently the locals previously did their best to attract the pigeons so that they could collect the guano as fertiliser for their crops. The valley contained remnant examples of fields of grapes, fruit trees and vegetable plots. İt seems that some locals still collect the guano and farm the small plots - we saw one local travelling out in a small horse-cart.

From the walk, we went to a local pottery. This was the usual demonstration and then a visit to their showroom. Actually, the pottery was interesting, with two predominant styles - one based on the old Hittite designs and the other on more contemporary (though hardly modern) Anatolian designs. Of course, we bought something!

We then went to Zelve Open Aır Museum, which is a set of gorges with various cave dwellings and churches. This was excellent, though it does involve quite a scramble over the rocks and into the caves (wondering when the soft-stone cave will collapse - as some have).

Then off to the Kaymakli Underground City, one of 150+ such cities in the region. This is a very extensive multi-level city, used as a place of refuge for the population and animals in times of crisis. İt has facilities for living, cooking, burials and worship, along with excellent ventilation and defensive systems. A key defensive measure was the ability to roll large mill-stones over to cover the doors and to chock these to stop outsiders rolling them back.

From there, we travelled to a couple of points that gave panoramas of parts of the area or or significant features, before heading back to Urgup.

We had a meal at a good restaurant (the Cappodicia Restaurant) which served a local speciality of a stew cooked in an earthenware pot or jar with the opening closed off by a plug of bread. The pot ıs prepared beforehand and then heated on a gas ring for us. The stew is served by the waiter arriving with the earthenware jar, a paır of industrial gloves and a meat cleaver. He then proceeds to strike and break the jar and serve the stew, with rice and salad. The best sign that a restaurant serves this meal is the mound of broken pots outside the door.

Friday dawned with clear blue skies. We had a free day, so we took a local minibus towards Avanos. We got off at the Goreme Open Aır Museum. This is probably much better known than the one at Zelve. İt is more of a monastic or theological site, with many rock churches, including some with excellent frescoes. Goreme Museum had ordered paths and seemed to have lots of tourists (it must be hell in the normal tourist season, as we are very late in the season). Overall, we preferred Zelve, though it is worth seeing both.

We caught the bus again, on into Avanos. We found a good restaurant, which served up a very good meat stew in a sizzling ceramic bowl (called a guvec) and a very poor white wine that they subsequently said was made by the proprietor of the restaurant. It was market day, so we wandered down to have a look. A wide assortment of spices, fruit and vegetables (particularly tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, chillies) were on offer, all looking very fresh and sometimes much larger than we would expect (especially the cabbages).

We were getting pretty good at this local travel, so it was back on the bus to return to Urgup. We had a drink in a local bar/restaurant (Cafe Turcos), which had a very welcoming staff. So much so that a number of the group went back there for dinner, including more casseroles and claypot stews.