Istanbul / Gaziantep / Aleppo / Homs / Damascus / Beirut

#9 That last part shoudl read 'western' tourists are pretty rare in the other places you mentioned. Still plenty of Gulf tourists in some of those places, like Latakia in the summer.

I haven't been in Syria for a year, but it's sometimes strange where you see people. For example, when I visited the Crusader castle 'Marhab' there were no other 'western' tourists in sight. This is despite the fact this excellent site is alomst as large as Krak de Chevaliers and easy to get to being not too far from the freeway. But then when you go to Salah ed -Din, which is really not that easy to get too (at least, I got totally lost when driving there) you find tourists everywhere......

butwheretonext.

I'll be in Istanbul from the 3 October and intend to travel down to Aleppo from there, and then tour around Syria, and eventually move onto Beirut. I've got a flight out of Beirut on 21 October, so it seems that our trips coincide pretty well. I'm game for linking up to experience the night life in either Turkey, Syria or Lebanon. I'm 35, male and from the UK.

If you would like to link up then you can contact me through: uk_mike_1 @ yahoo.com (removing the spaces). If not, then have a great time on your travels.

Cheers.

Aussie: You're right, that was quite ethnocentric of me ;-)

Hi,

We arrive in Damascus on 22 October, then heading to Aleppo the next morning to start working our way back down to Damascus..