Ancient Aleppo

Where we stayed - Tourist Hotel

Aleppo's Citadel

Aleppo was a bit of a shock to the system, to say the least. It is crowded, loud and dirty as hell. There is rubbish strewn on the ground absolutely everywhere and no one seems to mind or care at all. The people we encountered in Aleppo were extremely friendly though and would go out of their way to help us, children on the street would come running up to us and say "Welcome to Syria" whilst beaming huge grins and within moments of entering the tourist information office a staff member had whipped out a bag of lollies for the kids to munch on whilst trying to teach them a bit of Arabic.

Little boy, big citadel

We spent a morning visiting the Citadel which dominates the city skyline. It's a beautiful place to visit and it must have been magnificent when in it's prime, definitely the best part of the citadel is that you get wonderful 365 degree views of Aleppo from the top, and if you are there at the right time you can hear the call to prayer echoing loudly across the city.

Aleppo

We also spent a fair bit of time wandering around the charming cobble stoned Christian district of the city called Al-Jdeida, which has 5 beautiful churches each belonging to a different denomination.

Citadel

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see all that Aleppo has to offer, 3 out of 4 of us came down with diarrhoea on our second day in Aleppo so we didn't venture out too far after that.