it’s almost christmas and the tree is up. my parents’ artificial christmas tree has become a tradition in itself; it’s older than i am and truly vintage with it’s wooden trunk and individual colour-coded wire branches. i remember when i was a kid and accidentally broke the base of the tree. i thought i had read more
we went to the one of a kind show again this year, with rebecca in tow. had a few good finds and bought some christmas presents. art. pottery. crafts.
now that rebecca is all recovered, we are slowly starting to venture out into the real world again. together with grandma T, we paid a visit to the mall where christmas prep is in full swing. i thought this was a funny sight of all the parents with their cameras and camcorders. a bit young read more
after church on sunday, we went to granville island so helen could buy groceries for dinner. it was the perfect opportunity to take baby out in the stroller. beautiful fruit stand she was still in her lion costume and had a lot of admirers… someone even asked to take a photo of her! stay tuned read more
i initially didn’t think i would get rebecca a hallowe’en costume, but at the last minute i decided i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make her wear cute animal ears. inspired by a pair of adorable lion booties (thank you walter and gertrud!), i managed to sew her a little lion hoodie and vest, read more
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