Lebanon to Damascus, Syria

Off to Syria. We hired a taxi for $75 ($50 without A/C) and headed off to Damascus. The driver made several stops along the way and we assumed he was running a few errands on his way… The border crossing was interesting. The driver handled all the paperwork and sign-offs (he would take our passports, disappear into a building and come back with the stamps- they never even verified that we matched our passports). As we headed through the other checks, the driver would slyly put a pack of Marlboros on the seat when going through the passport check, or have a bag of bread in the trunk for the luggage check. All in all, it took 5 packs of Marlboros and 2 loaves of bread to get through the border checks. His “errands” on the way really paid off.

Once in Damascus, we got handed off to a local taxi driver who drove us crazy trying to figure out where we wanted to go. We finally got to the Orient Palace Hotel, an aging French beauty that had A/C, very high ceilings and a $35 room rate. We dumped our bags and headed to the Sheraton. Exhausted, we had burgers and planned the rest of our time in Syria. Since we had a refrigerator in the room, we walked all over the city to find beer and diet cokes. Our theory of the westernization of a country based on availability of Diet Coke panned out. No Diet Coke (or Pepsi)-but they had their own version of cokes that tasted like bad RC Cola. The local beer was awful- tasted a bit like someone had dumped cigarette ashes into a flat beer.

The city has an interesting feel- there are lots of chadored women (and lots of “bags”), but there are also a fair percentage of very western looking/dressing women. There’s also the sense of Jordan- very clean, very civilized and a bit less crazed in their driving style compared to Lebanon.

We took a short nap and then went to the Sheraton for drinks in the ex-pat pub. Beers were icy cold, popcorn was good and the lounge singer was awful. Old Tony Orlando and Dawn songs sung by a 60-year-old.