The Middle East... Syriasly!

Burj Al Arab and the Gulf of Arabia
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We start this installment with a short visit to Dubai. Now Dubai on a traveller's budget is much like going to a fancy restaurant and only ordering a side of fries. We know that there is a lot to do there, but the cost of these activities are quite prohibitive. That said, we enjoyed the few days we had seeing the Burj Al Arab, the Burj Dubai, the indoor ski slope, and dubai creek (Deira). Overall, this emerate was a little underwhelming despite the hype however we imagine that in ten years time the city will be quite extraordinary.

Mosque in Damascus
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We flew into Amman, Jordan and without a Syrian visa we took a gamble and bussed to the Syrian border. With a little luck, and a friendly customs officer, we were allowed into Syria. We concluded that it was Alisa's name pendant that got us through because Alisa is also the name of a famous "sexy Lebanese singer" that the officer told us he was particularly smitten by.

We had to duck down the alleys to avoid being invited to sit and enjoy tea, cola, sweets as we were literally dizzy from all the sugar and caffeine

Bosra's theatre with some of the excitable highschool children
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Despite the cold weather that we experienced while in Syria the people were always warm and welcoming. Unfortunately, our timing was a bit off in this area and we visited the old city in Damascus on a Friday (which is the holy day) and it was for the most part closed. We visited Hama, a city famous for it's famous norias (water wheels), and they were not turning. We saw Aleppo's Citadel, on the one day of the week that it was not open! That said, we did get to enjoy the wonderful alley of Aleppo's souq (market) as well as its historical city.

Bosra locals posing for a family picture
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One of the beauties of Syria is that the dry weather has helped preserve some of the most amazing ruins we have seen on our trip. Two examples of this can be fond in Bosra and Palmyra. The black-basalt town of Bosra houses a Roman theatre that was built in 2nd century AD when Bosra was the capital of the Roman province of Arabia. It looks almost exactly as it did in it's hay day. We could easily imagine what it was like in its glory if it wasn't for the 100+ Syrian highschool children wanting pictures with us and autographs. Quite atmospheric.

The Norias of Hama, Syria
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Palmyra's ruins are stunning. With it's Greek and Roman influenced past,the exceptional remains of temples, baths, a theatre, etc... run along a half mile of pillared street. The ruins were only topped by the hospitality offered by Palmyra's inhabitants. At one point we had to duck down the alleys to avoid being invited to sit and enjoy tea, cola, sweets as we were literally dizzy from all the sugar and caffeine we had injested. It seems as though Alisa was caught up in all the giving and spent one of our dinners feeding a two year old Syrian baby girl on her lap. We still don't know how that happened but we do know that that child could put down a lot of hummos.

Aleppo's Citidel... closed for the day
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Back into Jordan we met a couple of very friendly travellers from Florida who were into their 15th month of travel....crazy! We jumped into a car and toured the Mt. Nebo site (where Moses saw the "promised land" Israel as well as where Moses died) and the Dead Sea. The view from Mt. Nebo included Ramallah and Jerico (the oldest and lowest town in the world) in the West Bank, the Jordan River, and Jerusalem was just over the mountain range. The Dead sea was unreal. The salt content is so high that chunks of salt line the shore and you effortlessly flow on top of the water. This was followed by a mud treatment on the shore and a stop at the hot springs to complete our "spa day".

I'm a little tea pot...
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Moving south along the beautiful Kings Hwy we arrived at the location of the 3rd century city of Petra, one of the "new wonders of the world", but more impressively the location chosen for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. OUr group of 4 soon became 6 as two fun Torotonians joined us to visit the immense complex of rock-hewn tombs and caves. We spent two days and one evening sight seeing the intricately carved tombs in the colorful iron-ladened sandstone walls (thank-you Grandma Nelson). Embarassingly, we took a wrong turn and ended up scaling the rock face and found ourselves in a fenced-off area, smack in the middle of the amphitheatre!

Palmyra
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Wad Rum (of Lawrence of Arabia fame), home to spectacular desert scenery was where we spent an afternoon 4x4'ing and hiking. The sheer size of the massifs and surrounding desert truly made one feel the size of an ant! We capped off our day by trekking up to a plateau and taking in the sunset and the utter desert silence.