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:
In fact, I happened to be in al-Aziziah, perhaps the trendiest part of Aleppo, while the Germany-Argentina World Cup quarterfinal game was on. When I realized this, I tried to go watch it at one of the cafes, only to find almost all of them completely packed:
But I ended up finding one place, about two blocks away, that had a single table open (incidentally, the staff here were absolutely fantastic):
The game, of course, ended up being a 4-0 blowout by Germany, and for some reason, everybody had been cheering for them… or perhaps they just wanted to back the winner.
A couple of other things to mention: I did visit the museum again, and as always, no pictures were allowed inside, but the portico of the Aleppo museum is quite interesting, meant to be a restoration of the entrance to the original Tell Halaf museum in Berlin (destroyed in WWII):
Also, while I was in Aleppo, I got to hang out with my friend Kate, an archaeologist who was in the country at the end of a dig, and she was kind enough to show me around and give me tons of valuable tips on Syria travel in general (this is a picture of me, her, and her friend Eric, a fellow excavator):
One comment
that’s a nice picture of you and kate!