Baghdad, Offal and the Shine of the golden star

Monday 10th August
Aleppo...

The train pulled into Baghdad Station, ummm... did we take a wrong turn somewhere? No, Aleppo's main train station is called Baghdad Station. So we got a taxi and headed for downtown Baghdad, oops I mean Aleppo :) After a few turn-aways we found a really cute hotel called Spring Flower and it seemed really nice... little did we know the pillows were made out of some kind of concrete and that coupled with the street noise meant we got about 8 hours sleep in the three nights we had in Aleppo... but anyway, we found a nice roof top restaurant and watched Syrian pop music videos on the plasma tv.

Nick in our quaint little room, it looks kinda dark on here but it wasn't.

Spices anyone?.... anyone?

Tuesday 11th
Once we finally fell asleep it was difficult to get up again, but we did and first thing we wanted to do was check out Aleppo's old town and naturally, the souq. We had a map but clearly this meant nothing as we headed in the direct opposite direction to the aforementioned sights. Luckily I met a friendly ice cream vendor who pointed us in the right direction, shaking his head 'very far, very far madam...' fabulous. It wasn't too bad though (all that ice cream must have made him lazy) within 20 minutes we were entering Bab Antakya, the eastern gate into the old town.
Aleppo still has alot of its old towns walls intact so it was quite and impressive sight. Just down the road from the gate there are the offal sellers, not far from the coffee sellers, so just after your senses have been awakened to the beautiful coffee aromas, they are bombarded with this disgusting offal reek. Inside the old city is really authentic. It felt authentic in Damascus but now I see that has been cleaned up a bit for the tourists. Inside they have more offal, meat, livers, tongues and every ick food you can think off right next door to people selling spices or fabulous olive soap. Also the meat smells like a butchers but worse and anyone who knows me knows how much I hate the butchers... Nick said he's never seen me move so fast as past those meat vendors :) Inside the souq

We had let our guard down a bit lately and we were quickly lured into going to a jewellery store with a friendly young Syrian who spoke English. In the souqs they have separate sections for jewellery and cloth (thank goodness, can you imagine buying a couple meters of cotton next to a dripping lamb carcass?) so we wound in and out of the alleyways until we reached the guys shop. It was quite odd, his partner was a massive body builder (used to be like a world champ or something- we saw photos) and he's there chatting away to us making this delicate silver jewellery. massive guy, tiny earring :) you get the picture. Anyway we really liked this Armenian style pendant so we bought it and blew our mini budget for Aleppo. Stuffed camel head anyone?

We eventually made our way to the centre of the old city, where Aleppos' ancient citadel is situated. We got a kebab and sat down and people watched for a while. Then I realised the camera battery had gone flat :( So we decided to go into the citadel tomorrow and continue to float around the old city for today.


Shafts of light piercing the gloom

mmmm tongue... I had to hold my breath while taking these photos
Offal... intestines... can you believes someone put their mouth on it to blow it up? I know I know sausages are made with this filth but the smell was crazy bad...

Wednesday 12th
After another bad nights sleep we woke up to find we had no water. Awesome. So feeling rather ick and dirty we headed out again and made a beeline through the souq (via our fav kebab shop) to the Aleppo Citadel. It kind of reminded of the acropolis in Athens because its in the centre of the city and you can look out over everything. And there's ruins inside.

The entry to the Citadel.
Nick in the chair. Afterwards Nick looked like he did in high school :)

After exploring the citadel Nick decided to get a hair cut while we were in a cheap place :) The Barber moved so quick I couldn't get a photo of him that wasn't slightly blurred... and he did Nicks hair like his old Italian barber used to, short, tidy and combed over to one side.... and they gave me lollies while I waited!

After that we were a bit tired so we headed back to the hotel to use the internet, which was down. So Nick hung out in the room and I ventured out to the internet cafe. As I was sitting there minding my own business there was a thump on the glass window in front of me. Some guy had another guy by the throat.
Within 30 seconds (I kid you not) there were easily 100 guys brawling up and down the street, there were actually 3 fight 'epicentres' there were the original guys, some old men? and some hard core dodgy looking types. Every shop owner (except the net cafe) pulled down their roller doors. The rest of us in the cafe just watched until it died down. While it escalated quickly it also died down pretty quickly until it was only the original guys left talking things over. weird.

For dinner we went to this French/ Syrian restaurant where they didn't have an English menu, so they invited Nick and I into the kitchen to choose our meal. I left the selection up to Nick... But then this American group (don't know if they were from US or Canada) came in, were offered the same look and choose method... and they walked out... I didn't understand, the food was delicious looking, the kitchen was clean... what was their problem? The food tasted good too. They gave us free desert too although the creme caramel was burnt... lucky we didn't have to pay.

Thursday 13th

So we tried to get an early nights sleep, but the cement pillows hindered our attempts... and we had to get up at 4am!! for our 5 am bus to Turkey, that didn't leave until 5:30 grrrr...And the bus next to us was called 'Shine of the golden star' what an odd name for a bus company...

The border crossing back into Turkey was interesting. There were all these people on the bus who were 'planted' just to buy duty free stuff and bring it through. And us (and the rest of the bus) are actually acessories because they distributed 3 cartons of cigarettes and bottles of alcohol to every passenger just before we were searched by the Turkish customs. A young guy handed them out saying 'no problem, no problem' (that should be the Turkish national motto).

There was a lot of dodginess going on. When we were inbetween the two borders (and out of sight), they pulled over the bus and rummaged around underneath for a while. Also while the bus was being weighed by the Turkish guards the three musketeers (the bus driver, the steward and the head of smuggling guy) had anxiety written all over their faces and they sincerely looked like they were having the "Are we cool- we're cool right?" conversation with each other. Sweat was plentiful despite the cool morning...

I took a sneaky photo of them incase we needed to identify them later :D The guy walking away is the bus driver, red shirt is the steward, the next guy is a passenger (one of their planted guys) and Stripey shirt is the duty free smuggler.

Next stop Goreme... heart of Cappadocia!!