Near the end of my trip, I made two other sojourns to places outside of central/western Syria where I had spent all of my time. The first was to Palmyra (or Tadmor in Arabic), an ancient oasis city in the desert that once was an important caravan stop. The Roman ruins here give a glimpse read more »

In the course of traveling through all of the sites mentioned in the previous post, I spent a few nights in the coastal cities of Latakia (Arabic “al-Ladqiyye”) and Tartous. Latakia is on the northern coast of Syria, and is an important and bustling port city: I naively thought that I’d be able to catch read more »

After several days in the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo, I had the chance to visit a number of sites near Aleppo and the Mediterranean coast with the help of a driver–doing this helped me to cover quite a bit of ground over the course of two days. It’s hard to do justice to read more »

My wanderings in Aleppo’s new city took me all over the place, from more central places near my hotel, such as the famous Baron Hotel and shops just surrounding the Old City, to a cemetery south of Bab al-Maqam (this is waaay south by normal tourist standards), to trendier areas such as al-Jedeidah and al-Aziziah: read more »

After a couple of days in Damascus, I took a bus (5 hours) to Aleppo, the main city in northern Syria and a contender alongside Damascus for the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Like Damascus, Aleppo consists of an “old city” with a citadel and souq, surrounded by the read more »

My adventures in Damascus continued with more must-see sights: first of all, the National Museum of Damascus, which contains an important collection of antiquities: Unfortunately, pictures weren’t allowed inside (as is the case in many museums in syria), but there were plenty of replica-monuments in the outer courtyard: Later that day I went back to read more »