Flat Stanley in Syria

July 24, 2009

This weekend Ms. M and I did some traveling around Syria. We took a bus to Aleppo (it took 5 hours!) to meet some friends and see the city. Aleppo is smaller than Damascus but still very big. We saw the citadel which was amazing!! It was so big. I thought, Oh wow! So cool! Who built this?? The souk was also very interesting. It was similar to the souk in Damascus but the alleyways were narrower and it seemed like a maze. We saw lots of children in Aleppo. They all said, “Hello. What’s your name?” in English. Of course I said, “Hello, my name is Flat Stanley. What’s yours?” They had names like: Ahmed, Mohammed, and Emad.

After a few days, we left Aleppo and went to another city called Hama. It had big water wheels that used to be for making electricity. They were so pretty. Then we took a little side trip to see the Roman ruins of Apamea. There we saw the longest road from Roman times. The street was lined with tall columns. Some of them were broken but most of them were standing tall.

On the last day of our trip we went to see a huge castle called Crac de Chevalliers. It was so big! We climbed all the way to the top of the command post where you could see the whole castle from above. I was imagining that the enemy army was coming to attach the castle and I had to defend it! It was cool!