Day 5: Trip to Apamea, Serjilla, Basilica St. Simeon and Aleppo (4)
An hour later Omar dropped us off at our hotel in the centre of Aleppo. It was an emotional goodbye. We've had a terrific three days with him, having had great fun and seen loads of things.
We checked into the wonderfully named 'Tourist Hotel', which was a remarkably good, clean and above all cosy hotel. Definitely the second-best hotel in Syria.
Aleppo is the second city of Syria, located in the north of the country near the Turkish border. The city just breathes a Mediterranean atmosphere and I immediately liked it better than Damascus. One of the reasons for this is because for once someone had actually thought of what a city is supposed to look like. Unlike the drab greyness of modern Damascus and Hama, in Aleppo people have made an attempt to keep all new buildings in a classical style.
In the evening we went to have a couple of drinks in the famous Baron Hotel. In the past this hotel bar had welcomed illustre guests like Agatha Christie, Sean Connery, Oscar Wilde, TE Lawrence... a line-up they now completed having served the one and only Relayer and Biedjee!
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