Palmyra

After 2 days in Damascus, our next destination is city of Palmyra. Very surprisingly (it's not always the case) all our taxi drivers have meters and none of them was trying to cheat on us. at the station, we were the only persons who were not obliged to scan the luggage. Syrian government is doing its best to prevent the terrorist attacks. Apparently we didn't look very suspicious.

I think it will become a tradition, that the worse the beginning, the best the ending.. we have heard that after 9/11, the number of tourists arriving to Palmyra has significantly decreased and competition between the hotels became a bit nasty. and indeed, before even arriving to Palmyra, our bus driver unilaterally decided that we should go out already and go to the hotel in front of which he stopped. after our refusal, he was very unhappy, but he continued to drive. he stopped at the station. and number of people shouting and trying to convince us to follow them, was really impressive. but as we follow Lonely Planet advices, we decided to stay in recommended by LP the Sun Hotel.. the owner indeed was very nice, but the hotel... I was taking shower with closed eyes and slept in my sleeping bag, without any will to touch the duvet..

the quality of our room pressured us to leave it ASAP - we decided to head to the main city attraction and actually one of the most splendid historical sites. the ruins date to the 2nd century AD an cover some 50 hectares!! they are really impressive!! but before we got there, an amusin story has happened. we've heard that the president of Syria was in Palmyra that day, and while we're walking to the ruins we saw a caravan of at least 15 cars - police cars and black government cars. they were all driving very slowly just next to us, so we do believe that although we couldn't see the president (because all windows were also black) - he definitly saw us!! :-)

in the ruins we also met Bedouins with camels - I absolutely wanted to do a small ride on camel. his owner - a boy called Ali - was very nice, didn't want actually money and proposed that he could come the next day with two camels and show us the sunrise in the ruins. I agreed straight away, Angie after a little while :-)

Palmyra offered us also a very delicious Syrian food, a very delicious Syrian wine, a delicious shisha and amazingly friendly company of locals :-)

the day after, at 5am, two Bedouin boys with camels arrived in front of our hotel. we were so lucky - the sky was blue (what was not that sure as the previous day it was raining) and without any single cloud! 20 minutes later we were admiring a sunrise, beautifully lighting the ruins of Palmyra. after the sunrise, boys invited us to the bedouine tent for breakfast. kardamon coffee, houmus and scrambled eggs with naan were the most delicious breakfast we had so far!! and after they decided to show us the desert, where we got on their motorbikes!! absolutely amazing feeling to visit the desert at this time of the day and with this mean of transport!!! we ABSOLUTELY loved our Palmyra adventure!!