http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew Llew's Continued Meanderings Throughout the World Thu, 01 May 2008 15:45:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Dubai (and, to a lesser extent, Sharjah) was like a mixture of LA and Singapore.  Take the haze; sprawl; traffic; American fast food reataurants and wide, palm lined boulevards of LA.  Add Singapore's plethora of fancy shopping malls; its official encouragment of the growth of a "modern" city; and a pinch of it's subtle ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/uae-eh.html (I'm sure there's a good pun to use with Amman somewhere, but I'm a bit sick and unable to find it right at the moment.) The trip from Aqaba up to Amman (our last inter-city travel in Jordan) proved to be far more challenging than we'd anticipated.  We were hoping to ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/back-up-to-amman.html The day after Petra started early.  Our bus leaving town was due to stop by the hotel and pick us up at 06:15, and we had to eat breakfast AND pick up provisions (thankfully the bakery in town opened at 05:00) before getting aboard. The need for provisions arose from our ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/sand-and-more-sand-and-for-a-change-some-sand-oh-and-some-water-too.html Our first day in Jordan was a monster transport day: A long wait for the bus from Bosra to Der'a, Syria.  A shared taxi from Der'a across the border to Ramtha, Jordan.  Another shared taxi from Ramtha to Amman.  A city bus from the north Amman bus terminal to the southern ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/petra-glyphs.html Our service taxi dropped us off at the international bus terminal, well east of the Damascus city centre, so we had to take a taxi into the city.  The driver was a pleasant fellow, and with our meagre skills in one-another's languages we managed to have a bit of a ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/checkin-out-the-dama-scene.html Our voyage out of Beirut (and given the traffic, any trip out of Beirut qualifies as a voyage) took place on a Sunday morning. The Lebanese take Sunday as a day of rest much more seriously than most Canadians do, so this added a bit to the adventure. We caught ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/small-town-lebanon.html Our trip into Lebanon was a bit of an adventure in itself... From Krak des Chevaliers we took a taxi to the town of Tal Kala, and from there a microbus to the border. Things at the border went smoothly enough, but once across it appeared we would be at ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/big-city-lebanon.html After some confusion about how to buy our tickets, when they were available for sale, whether we could take a proper bus or a microbus and where exactly we were going, we finally managed to get ourselves on the way to Homs. Ninety minutes on the bus, half an ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/stop-hama-time.html After a disappointingly hasty exit from Deir ez Zur, we were on our way to Palmyra.  Right out in the middle of the desert, this Roman era city is one of, if not THE tourist highlight of Syria.  Constructed in front of a huge oasis, the ruins of Palmyra are ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/shes-old-but-wow-is-she-ever-photogenic.html After changing a few Euros into Syrian pounds, we got a (extrodinarily expensive, but given that we had Turkish money left to spend, that didn't matter) taxi trip to the Syrian border. As Sarah didn't have her Syrian visa yet, it took a little while to get through (though not that ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/llew/syria-is-most-definitely-in-the-middle-east.html