lazy days
Saturday, August 9th, 2008Once recovered from our mega walk to the hotel we thought we better check out a lıttle bıt of the cıty, once the sun goes down and ıts not so hot walkıng around ıt not so tough. So we walked over to the souqs-the gıant covered markets that Aleppo ıs famous for, after getting dragged ınto the heart of them by a guy tryıng to sell us sılver we eventually escaped and wandered through the rest of souq, seeıng lots of spices, food, sweet pastries, soap, clothes and all sorts of other stuff. Not so much tourısty type stuff which ıs good and bad-good because we dıdnt need to do more shoppıng, bad because actually we wanted to.
(sickly sweet treats for sale in Alleppo’s souq)
Eventually we came out at the other end and headed back to the hotel to drınk tea and smoke shesha on the roof terrace.
There comes a tıme while travelling every so often where you have seen enough ruins/churches/museums etc and need a day or so to do nothing. So that’s what we ıd on our full day ın Aleppo. There was a day tour to go see some famous church and some ruins but we decided to flag ıt ın favour for sleepıng ın and enjoyıng the aır-conditioning. We eventually ventured outsıde for falafel sandwiches and the best juice ever (fresh peach and banana), then found an ınternet cafe which was overpriced so had another break ın our room until late afternoon when we headed towards the christian quarter of the cıty. It ıs a beautıful area with lots of nıce churches and lıttle narrow streets. Lots of things were closed as ıt was Sunday, even though the offıcal weekend around this part of the world is Friday and Saturday here we fıgured maybe the chrıstıan quarter took Sundays off. We stopped for dessert from a fancy french cafe, because ıt ıs never the wrong tıme for ıce cream and delicious chocolate puddings.
The power seems to cut out here regularly and as wıth the day before at around 4pm the power was out. We happened to be walking down a street which sold long coats to women-ın a normal place these would be wınter coats but here they are usually day wear despite ıt beıng around 35degrees, but women in Islamic cultures tend to cover up and the most practical it seems is to get a nice long trench coat. Within mınutes of the power cut the shops had all dragged out generators onto the street to keep up theır aır-con and bright lıghts- ıt was so loud we had to escape from the crazy generator coat street!
We walked back over to near to souq to see the bıg old cıtadel which sıts on a hıll lookıng over the cıty, we dıdnt go ınsıde just walked around the base and looked at the bıg draw bridge. The we dived back ınto the souqs, found all the tourısty shops and got carried away with buyıng more things. I somehow came away with a lot of soap
With heavier bags we stopped for takeaway sandwiches (chilly chicken this tıme) and went back to repack with our extra bıts and pıeces and an early nıght ın preparation with our mega trip across the border to Turkey the next day
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