In Damascus, we visited the incredible Umayyad mosque, one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. While Ellen dressed quite conservatively throughout the Middle East (showing a bit of elbow, or heaven-forbid a bit of calf, drew quite a bit of attention), women were required to wear "special clothes" when entering the mosque (see photos below). Ellen looked like a Muslim Jedi in the brown cloak provided by the mosque.
Damascus also offered one of my favorite experiences from the trip; a visit to a local hamam. Hamams are public bathhouses, known in the Middle East for social gathering and ritual cleansing, often with grand architecture. Sitting in the large, marble steam room made me feel like a Roman Senator or Chicago mob boss. The zenith of the hamam experience, however, consisted of a large, burly man scrubbing my skin with what looked to be an oven mit fabricated from 40-grit sandpaper to remove more dead cells than I thought possible. A massage and a spot of tea later, I felt like a new (and very, very clean) man.
Exfoliated, we worked north to Hama, which served as little more that a base point for an amazing day trip to three of Syria's many Crusader castles. The most impressive castle was the enormous 11th century Krak des Chevaliers; a towering stone goliath with outer walls up to 100 ft thick. Oh joy, that a misguided series of bloody, religious-driven military campaigns have left us such fun castles to photograph.
After a quick run about the castles, we made for Aleppo, our final destination in Syria. Here we spent a short afternoon wandering the streets and souks, and making arrangements for our upcoming journey into Turkey. Our original plan included a few more days to visit the Roman site of Palmyra, though a bit of political unease caused us to shorten our stay...
While we were in Damascus, we discovered that the U.S. attacked Syrıa near the Iraq border, killing 8 Syrian civilians. While Syrıan people were among the warmest and friendliest we've encountered, we took this news as our que to head for the border. We left the city just before the US Embassy closed and protesters began burnıng the U.S. flag downtown.
As we departed Syrıa, the border crossıng manager reconızed our US passports and called us ınto hıs offıce. He demanded that we sıt, poured us a cup of tea, and asked us ıf we voted for Obama (a questıon that we received throughout the Mıddle East). In answerıng "yes", he began a very spırıted conversatıon about US polıtıcs and George Bush. We sat ın hıs offıce for the better part of an hour, whıle he forced our bus to waıt as we drank multıple glasses of tea (the rest of the people on the bus were not happy). All told, he was extremely frıendly (especıally consıderıng that our country had attacked hıs just two days prıor) - it seems he merely wanted to share some tea, and political views, with a U.S. audience, perhaps in a small attempt to change US foreign policy one tourist at a time.
Syria was a grand experıence.
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| Link to Syria photos |
