Now that's what I call Roman ruins ...

Haven't had time to tell you yet about all the adventures in Syria during the Eid holidays - where does the time go? - so here are a some tales and photos from Palmyra in Eastern Syria (miss the turning and you're in Iraq before you know it).



So, we arrived at night and then managed to get up at silly o'clock in the morning to watch the sun rise over the ruins. I climbed to the top of a (dangerously uncordoned off) tower and sat absolutely gobsmacked - the place is vast, and we had it to ourselves until a few Bedouin and their camels turned up to bring some bouncey Spanish tourists to our spot - at which point we slunk off for some well-needed coffee ...






Reinvigorated, we booked a tour of some of the funeral towers, which are located in the valleys leading away from the main site, and which were beautiful in their own spooky way - towers with shelves for all the bodies from a family and stone busts of the 'inhabitants'. And as with everything else, superbly preserved by the desert ...



And after the funeral towers, the city itself - there is soooooooooo much to see here, with large parts of the city having been reconstructed by archeologists in the last century and yet so much more yet to rebuild or even discover. There's certainly enough already to make it easy to imagine Palmyra in it's heydey as a bustling trading city in the middle of the desert, there to make sure that the rich Romans got their hit of Eastern delights - incense, spices and prostitutes among other things ...

View of the central crossroads in town

The theatre (useful fact of the day:
apparently it's not an amphitheatre if it doesn't go all the way around)

The ENORMOUS Temple of Bel,
the largest of the many temples they've discovered so far

I could go on forever (if you want to be subjected to the full photo and commentary one day, just ask when I'm back!), so let me finish by telling you a few of my favourite things about Palmyra;



1. Realising how much more there is to uncover from all the fascinating bits and pieces just lying around ...










2. The oddness of some of the reconstruction work (look closely) ...


3. The recycling of Roman ruins by Arab tribes to build a fortress around the Temple of Bel - here, old column sections being used to make the wall on the right ...










4. Some of the gruesome details - like here, the sacrificing table outside the Temple of Bel complete with dips to collect the flowing blood ...







5. The Arab fortress perched up on high above the city, almost as if it's gloating about the fallen civilisation before it ...