Syrian Sojourn

This weekend saw the first of our many (hopefully) trips to Syria. One of the reasons for choosing to live in Lebanon was the fact that you can access Syria easily (well, foreigners can, for the Lebanese entering Syria and the Syrians entering Lebanon it has got a lot harder over the last year). I say 'easily'. 'Easily' means taking around an hour to get your passport, your travelling companion's passport and your car's passport stamped in and out of each country. It makes you long for the EU and the cursory glance your passport is given at the entrance to Eurostar!

Anyway, once we were through passport control (which also has the longest no-man's land I have ever crossed - about 5km!) we headed off for Damascus. (N.B for future visitors: I am exagerrating the timings for literary effect. Do not let this put you off coming to Syria). It was quite strange to see buildings not damaged by gunfire, to be honest. We didn't get to see too much of Damascus apart from the Souks this visit, but there is a very beautiful Mosque in the old city, and one of the oldest churches in Christianity - the church St Paul visited after his conversion on the road to Damascus. I too, waited for my Damascene conversion, but it did not come. I think I was on the wrong road.

So the weekend was spent in a reconnaisance fashion. We scoped out some good places to take my parents and my sister Jo and her husband James when they come out in the next few months. There is loads to see! Saturday we went down to Bosra (not to be confused with Basra in Iraq). This is one of the most complete Roman Ampitheatres in existence, and is built in black granite. Its preservation is thanks to the fact that it was covered in sand for a few hundred years. As we had sandy rain in Beirut for much of last week I am hoping that the preserving qualities of sand extend to humans, and that I will not age very much this month. But back to Bosra. The Ampitheatre is huge, and the acoustics are amazing. Unlike many ampitheatres, this one has not been hollowed out into a hillside and so the human effort required to build it must have been phenomenal. Next to the theatre are the ruins of the old city, and one of the oldest Mosques in existence - still in use today. Pictures follow below:

Oh well, picture appears above. One day I'll get the hang of this. Pictures will now follow in the next post.

You will note from the picture that appears at the beginning of the post, despite my best efforts, that there are some orderly queues forming in the base of the Ampitheatre. These queues were made up of some Syrian schoolchildren who were on an educational visit to Bosra. We had a brief chat with them - me using my Arabic and they using their English and we were about the same level!! I was delighted to realise that I have the same educational attainment in Arabic as an 11 year old Syrian girl in English. Truth be told, they were probably better, but I think that was because there were 10 of them and so they could pool their knowledge. Anyway, there is a photo of them with their teacher in the next post.

So, Bosra accomplished, we headed back to Damascus and the Souks (which are fab!) and went out to a really nice restaurant in the Christian Quarter in the Old City. The food in Syria is not as consistently good as in Lebanon, but in the good restaurants (which still cost under a tenner), the food is certainly the equal of the food we have had in Lebanon - and maybe a little better because there is more spice to it...

Sunday was spent visiting the Grandaddy of all Crusader Castles, Krak d'Chevalier. This has to be seen to be believed and the photos will do most of the talking for me. It is H.U.G.E and very well preserved. The view is fantastic and you can see why it occupied such an important strategic point. You can see enemies approaching for tens of miles. The castle itself is also impregnable, even today. In fact, its defences were never breached and it was only ceded by negotiation. How civilised.

Interestingly, or not, next to Krak is a restaurant were Sean Connery once ate. This is also the restaurant's main selling point - or so the owner would have us believe. Personally, I thought the views were a better draw...

Our historical appetites satiated, we headed back for the border and Beirut. Syria is an amazing country - it has so much more space than Lebanon and so many ancient and medieval sites to see. The only sign that you are in a one-party state are the ubiquitous photos of Bashar Assad and his father, and perhaps the reluctance of the Syrians to really discuss Syrian politics. (We had dinner with some friends of Dom's). One other sign might be that people actually obey traffic laws and stop at traffic lights, but I think that this is the norm and that Lebanon is the exception here!

This week, I will be resting.