Lattakia which also along the Mediterranean Coast was damn hot.
We got a taxi as Djalma and I were feeling a bit dodgy and after an exasperating conversation with the taxi driver who had no idea about how to read a map or where the, well known, hotel was, we ended up in the budget hostel where Tintin fans sleep for free. We arranged to sleep on the roof, for free the first night, and then passed a fair bit of time in the living room which served as the reception trying to get cool. We spent the next the next three nights at that hotel, taking it easy because my poor baby couldn't keep anything inside for long. It was me who ran round finding food, not an easy task during the day in Ramadan, and trying not to get ripped off. The last day we had a good look round, despite me insisting that there wasn't much to see Djalma really didn't want to leave without having a good walk round the city, it took hours, was achingly hot and put me in an awful mood. After it we both decided that it was pretty ugly and not really worth visiting, but at least now we knew for sure and not just from me going out to try and find food.
We left that afternoon and got the train to Aleppo, an absolute mission, it was supposed to take three hours but after an hour long stop in the middle of no-where and goodness what else causing delays, it took five. We arrived in Aleppo in the early evening and set about finding a hotel. No-one that we stopped and asked for help was very friendly including nearly all the hotels we stopped at, in the end Djalma found somewhere on the terrace and after a bit of persuasion that let me sleep up there as well – apparently it was men only.
In the morning we were on a mission to find food, it took us an hour to get something to eat and it was right next door to our hotel – how irritating. In between Djalma had found us a room with air-conditioning and we moved our bags there, we headed back to the hotel to wait out the heat of the day in the comfortable chill of heavenly air-conditioning. We went out around sundown, the place was like a ghost town, which was just as well because everyone we had met so far, with the exception of the one guy Djalma had spoken to, was exceptionally grumpy and/or rude. We wandered around the old part of town which was really quite pretty, looking for a restaurant to have dinner in. Aleppo is the food capital of Syria but we didn't find much to back that up, we left one restaurant because one of the waiters threw a menu at us, what a plonker and wandered the streets increasingly hungry trying to find somewhere we could afford to eat. Despite numerous suggestions on my part to get a little baklava or two to tide us over until we found something more substantial to eat Djalma made us wait, I found a little kebab joint and we sat down, famished, to eat a tasty, spicy kebab wrap. Fortified we continued wandering around and finally stopped for some sweets. A point to note if travel in Syria, pastry shops sell by weight and if you only want a piece of two, you usually get given it for free, which is not the same case in Turkey where pastries are sold by weight or piece and are considerably more expensive. The next day was much the same, we stayed in our room and left at night.
Our last day in Aleppo we ventured out in the morning to see what the souqs held before we left for Turkey. A big mistake, I was fed up of Syria and was as grumpy as the poor locals fasting and I'd had enough of being openly stared at despite Djalma being around, mind you, Djalma was considerably more upset about the latter than me. We wandered through the not-so-crowded streets dodging, or trying to, the squirts from water bottles – they might not be allowed to drink between sun-up and sun-down but nothing in the book says anything about a thorough soaking to keep you cool. The thing that did was an unintended squirt that caught my camera, Djalma flipped his lid and the man got a good squirt back before we left. Talking about it, we decided that all the kicking back and the heat and everything wasn't doing our sense of humours much good and we left the souq to grab our bags and head for border. Roll on Turkey!
No comments:
Post a Comment