Summer Photos Finally Posted
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Well I finally got around to posting our pictures from our summer trip to the Middle East (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey). They can be found by clicking on the Photographs Link at the top of this page. The individual links for each area are listed below:
Hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Geo & Noel
From Syria to Turkey…
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Hello friends!
Sorry it’s taken so long to get another update on the blog, but there are some pretty serious internet censorship issues in Syria that made it impossible to put anything online.
Since our last post we have been to Aleppo in Syria where we stayed in a fantastic old riad in the middle of the souks in the old walled city – it was a fantastic place hung with beautiful brass lamps, antique carpets and grape vines. We visited the old city, and the very impressive Citadel – an incredible fort that we could not help but compare to Crac de Chevaliers in Syria. Crac was an imposing Crusader fortress built on top of a mountain, overlooking vallies in all directions. It had a double moat, and facilities to house 4000 horses and knights and all their food, equipment and supplies for 45 days in times of siege. Best of all, it had a real round table for the knights on the uppermost floor of the inner fortification (Kelly – you would have loved it.) The Citadel in Aleppo actually housed a town population, had a massive dry moat, a king, a church and a mosque, and had all of the city gates brilliantly situated around corners to disallow the use of battering rams to break dowm the doors in times of siege. The views of old Aleppo from the top of the Citadel were stunning – it was looking out over an old Biblical town (which is ironic, as it was a Roman town reknowned for its partying and debauchery).
Palmyra
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We’re sweating it out in the sand in the Syrian desert oasis town of Palmyra. It’s amazing how the stereotype of the desert oasis is a reality here – you literally drive for hundreds of kilometers through nothing but sand, dunes, rock (and the occasional camel race track) to come upon an island of green in the middle of the sand. It’s easy to see why this area has been populated for thousands of years – it’s the only water around for miles.
In Damascus, Syria
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We’re in Damascus, Syria. We left Jordan yesterday, and made a quick stop in the old Roman city of Jerash before crossing the border. It was an amazing old columned – street city (the longest Roman road in existance) , complete with Roman amphitheather, several churches with amazing mosaics (still in tact), and an enormous Temple to Artemis. The place has been a working archeological site for 50 years, and it probably will be one for another 80 years. There were fallen facades , pilars and buildings laying asembled on the ground, ready to be rebuilt. It was know as the city of 1,000 pillars. The temple would have been the largest in the world, had it not been destroyed by earthquakes.
Summer Trip Finalized
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Well we changed our original plans again and are now flying to Cairo, Egypt and exploring Egypt for a week before picking up a tour that will take us through the Middle East. The tour is with Intrepid Travel out of Melbourne, Australia and will take us from Cairo to Istanbul, Turkey.
