Aleppo, Syria

I've been in Syria for a couple weeks now and I've been having a great time. Despite what some people may believe about this country it is actually a very safe and friendly place to travel through.

We first arrived Aleppo in the north of the country after a bit of an epic 21 hour bus journey from Turkey which involved lots unscheduled stops, me losing my wallet and getting it back minus 50 lira and finally being dumped by the side of the road because our bus was going to Damascus not Aleppo and having to get a minibus for the final 20 miles of the trip. On the plus side we met an Australian called Rachel on the bus who is working the UN Damascus so we were able to get a bit of local information from her.

Aleppo lays claim along with Damascus to oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It's a really chilled out relaxing place despite its size and I immediately liked the place. Syria feels a lot different to Turkey and it's a lot more like traveling now rather than just being on holiday which is what Turkey felt like.

The immediate joys of Aleppo are the juice bars; they have all sorts of fruits and will whack whatever you like in a blender and make you a massive smoothie - all for just 50p. Coming in a close second was the 15p falafels, served by a friendly bunch of people who kept giving us a complementary falafel on arrival, as if they weren't cheap enough already.

In terms of sights the main attractions are massive souq (market) and the citadel. The souq is a really amazing place. It's a labyrinth of narrow streets, selling pretty much everything you could imagine from sweets and jewelery to bits of string (which I bought four metres of - you can never have enough string I always say) to sheep's intestines (which I didn't buy any of). There are a few guys round here searching out the tourists and luring them into their jewelery shops. We got lured in, and the guy was pretty charming and did a pretty good job almost managing to sell us some, but we were strong and resisted.

The citadel is a very impressive sight. It's built on a hill and is clearly visible from quite a distance away. It's situation atop the hill makes it very difficult to imagine anyone ever being able to successfully lay siege to the place. As you walk up the main bridge there are many holes over head where you can have burning oil spilt on your head. There is also a keep to the left of the bridge for archers to fire on any would be attackers. The main gate is set off to the right when you get to the end on the bridge, placed so to cunningly avoid attack by battering ram. On top of this once through the gate there are a series of right angle turns and about more three more gates to negotiate making attack very difficult indeed. From atop the citadel there are great views across the city.

We used Aleppo as base to do a few tours to some surrounding ruins. We visited the cathedral of San Simeon. This is a guy who lived his on top of an 18 meter high pillar. He had a chain round his neck to stop himself falling off and spent his time giving out advice to the many people that came to visit him. He wouldn't however speak to women, and that included his own mother. He died in 459 AD and was apparently one of the most famous people in the world at the time of his death. The column he lived upon no longer survives but the rest of the cathedral was definitely worth a wonder round.

We also did a tour out to the Dead Cities. I can't actually remember the name of the cities we visited but we spent a fairly pleasant morning wondering round the ruins and then carried onto Apamea. I didn't actually know anything about this place until we turned up there. I was really blown away by the place. It is 2 kilometer stretch of parallel colonnades, stretching as far away as the eye can see. The sun was setting as we walked along it making the scene even more awesome. Far off to one side is huge citadel, and there are ruins of theaters and baths along the way. I've seen a fair few ruins in my time but this was one of the best, made all the better because no one else was there.

From Aleppo we headed out east along the Euphrates to visit some more ruins, which I'll write about in my next post...