Venus & Ulysses 2004

Long Time, No Post...

Hi!

I last posted having just arrived in Petra in Jordan. We haven't had any opportunities to post since, either because there wasn't any Internet or because we were sleeping early and getting up early.

Petra starts out with a gorge that could be a tourist attraction in Utah all by itself, which ends with a massive facade hewn into the rock called "The Treasury" that was featured in Indiana Jones. Many facades of Nabatean tombs remain in Petra, but most of the actual city hasn't been restored. It's a fascinating place. We spent two days there walking around and taking pictures.

The next day we went to the desert near Wadi Rum, in a 4WD Toyota truck driven around by a Bedouin. We camped out in the middle of nowhere and played with the telescope; we definitely saw Jupiter and two of its moons really close together; we saw a fuzzy spot which was the Ring Nebula. The driver seemed reluctant to enter Wadi Rum proper, perhaps because he didn't like how the government was treating the Bedouins who lived there, but found a way in without paying in the morning. We weren't sure if we were being driven around Yosemite without seeing Yosemite Valley, but it was all pretty spectacular desert scenery. It's where "Lawrence of Arabia" was filmed, and where the story actually took place.

The fast boat crossing from Aqaba to Nuweiba in Egypt was "down for maintenance" so we had to take the slow boat. It's a 2.5 hour crossing instead of a 1 hour crossing. That's not including the 2.5 hours before the boat actually leaves (after its nominal time) and the 1 hour before you can really get off. We got in a taxi to St. Catherine, and spent the night in the Morgana Villas, which seemed surprised to see people who were not a massive tour group.

St. Catherine's is located at the base of Mount Sinai, and houses the progeny of the original Burning Bush. Most massive tour groups get up at 3, get to the top of the mountain at sunrise, and then check out the monastery afterwards. We got up at 4 and couldn't get a taxi to the mountain, so we went back to sleep, checked out the monastery, and climbed the 3750 Steps of Penitence up to the top in the middle of the warm, breezy day. There were no tourists at all (but no taxis when we got back to the bottom). An Israeli couple shared a minibus with us towards our next destination, Sharm al-Shaikh, where we are now. I asked if he spoke Arabic -- he said "no, I speak Body Language".

Sharm al-Shaikh, as Ray has been saying, is in the Republic of Touristia, as opposed to being in Egypt. We're at a five-star hotel ($70 on the Internet; $220 if you just go there). It's like a vacation from our mad work of travel, with bathtub-warm water and lots of fish to look at swimming around coral right at the hotel beach. We'll probably take a boat trip to see better ones tomorrow or the next day. For awhile we thought we had Ethernet (high-speed Internet for our computer) in our room, but it turned out to be just a telephone connector that was too wide. So we're back at the Internet cafe.

A woman we met on the slow boat told us we should have gone to Da'hab, which is the laid-back stoner hippie dive center with very accessible snorkelling, instead of Sharm, which is the expensive touristy dive center with less accessible snorkelling. Also, we'd planned to take the high-speed ferry to Hurghada, but it's closed for maintenance (for a week). So we'll skip Hurghada, and fly EgyptAir straight to Luxor on Tuesday night. We probably shoudn't have scheduled a fast-paced trip in a slow-paced country, especially without a rental car, but I'm sure it'll all work out.

Traveling was very straightforward in Syria -- prices were understood and reasonable. In Jordan, things were a bit weirder (I couldn't take a day off my car rental as I'd done in Syria; we were almost shortchanged at a gas station; etc.). In Egypt, every dealing is a challenge. The taxi from St. Catherine's to Sharm tried to raise the agreed-on price of 350 to 400 in the middle of the voyage (we refused, of course). Taxi drivers ask you how much you want to pay, and usually double that.

We walked around a mini-mall today, and Egypt definitely has the shopping thing wired -- there's lots of nice stuff to sell to tourists (as well as loads of schlock...)

Time to get back into the perfect water...


Dave on 05.30.04 @ 08:50 AM PDT [link]

A New Low

As I mentioned earlier, today we were driven from Damascus to Amman, and then we drove from Amman to Petra.

We spent awhile in Madaba, which has many old mosaics from around the seventh century. The most impressive one was a map encompassing what is now Israel, Jordan, and Egypt on the floor of a Greek Orthodox church. There were two other churches that had significant mosaics that have been largely preserved or restored. In one, a guy mopped some water over a mosaic and the colors leapt out -- I wish they could find a way to keep all the colors that vibrant all the time, since most of what we saw was pretty dusty and gray.

Then, on a whim, we drove to the Dead Sea, which is 300 meters below sea level, the lowest point on land in the world. I think it is the lowest we will ever get. We walked half a km or so from the road, and ended up getting some Dead Sea Slime on our boots and my pant cuffs. It's really salty.

Then we drove as fast as we could to Petra. But the entire drive on "the King's Highway" and the other road out to the Dead Sea was geographically gorgeous. Literally, I guess -- rivers have carved out some impressive canyons which we traversed a couple of. There were very beautiful mountainscapes on all of the roads we drove on before it got dark.

In Amman I was able to use an ATM, something I think I'll be doing quite often now that I've discovered what the prices are like in Jordan. Anyway, we'll discover Petra tomorrow, and let you know what we think.


Dave on 05.24.04 @ 01:33 PM PDT [link]

Having a Great Time! Wish You Were Here!

It's been a long day. We got up at 6, had an amazingly quick trip from Damascus to Amman in a "service taxi", which is some Chevy boat that the driver charges for each space; the guy in the front seat bought the two "spaces" up there, and the two of us bought the three in the back. Amman posed a few difficulties, but we finally got out of there, and took the back road to Petra, where we are now. Unfortunately, we didn't get here until after dark, but more on Jordan later.

I thought I'd review my impressions of Syria, especially since some of the recent posts might have seemed too negative. It's a great place! You should go!

Everyone is REALLY nice. Maybe there's a little tourist indoctrination "You ask them where they're from, and then you say 'you're welcome!' ", and most people we met were trying to sell something, but there were some that weren't and they were really nice too.

In addition to "tomato tourism", perhaps there should be "FSOJ tourism". I was really impressed twenty years ago in a bar in Palo Alto which made screwdrivers with fresh-squeezed orange juice. Try finding a bar in California (or for that matter a breakfast place) now that uses something other than Minute Maid (maybe there are some, I don't go out much...). It seems to me that the food distribution system in the US discourages things like fresh tomatoes and FSOJ, and that's really too bad. In Damascus, there are MANY places on the street you can get fresh-squeezed juice from 6am to midnight.

Syria is really inexpensive for a second-world country. This is even more obvious now that we're in Jordan. The FSOJ was $1 a glass -- the glasses at some places were probably 24 oz. We found very nice places to stay for between $30 and $50 a night. Great dinners were less than $15 for the two of us. Taxi rides around Aleppo or Damascus were generally under a dollar. It cost $3 to get into most museums and ruins.

At no time did I feel unsafe in Syria (though a few times I felt taken advantage of, such as the taxi from the airport upon arrival). Walking around downtown Damascus at midnight was probably safer than midday.

Syria is definitely part of The Cradle of Civilization. It has LOTS of really old stuff, like the first and second millenia BC. Much of it is very well preserved, or restored, and viewable in its original locations and in the National Museum in Damascus (or in some cases, the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul...) It's pretty fascinating how well people were already making pottery and tools in the Bronze Age.

Driving in Syria is really fun. Traffic enforcement isn't a big priority (except in Damascus). It's like Boston, only better. It's like India, but without elephants and rickshaws -- it's all very cooperative and free-flowing. Driving in America is fascist by comparison (though not as fascist as Australia).

Like Ray mentioned, it's a little difficult getting around in Syria without knowing Arabic, but it's not really that hard (except if you're trying to find an obscure hotel in Damascus -- stick to big ones).

The parts of Syria we saw weren't that geographically interesting -- it was mostly desert or cement city or farmland. There wasn't anything dramatic like redwoods or carved canyons or anything. But the food and antiquities more than made up for it.

The food is really good. I didn't find a wide variety of main dishes, but there are billions of different appetizers. We never really had anything bad anywhere in Syria (until tonight in Jordan, which made us notice how good Syria had been) except one old guy who cheated with FSOJ and squeezed half an orange into some Tang.

And right now it's really not crowded at all -- all the space normally taken up by American tourists is available! Book now!


Dave on 05.24.04 @ 01:19 PM PDT [link]

Dreams of Traveling

If you ever dream of traveling, and the dream is one of the ones where you are running and running and you never seem to get anywhere, that would be last night. It took us 3 hours to find our hotel in Damascus, and the most unnerving part is that we didn't do anything wrong, particularly. Or at least anything small and correctably wrong. Not learning Arabic turns out to be a mistake. However, if you come into Damascus after dark, the traffic on the streets is about like lower Manhattan (except, who's ever driven in lower Manhattan?), and the streets themselves are like a particular text based computer game back in the day ("a maze of twisty little passages", for the youngsters) (tm) Anyway, we were doing all the things right that you are supposed to do, we had reservations ("new, exceptional value"), we had a map, we had a phone, and we did find people who spoke enough English to ask questions of --- it is sometimes mentioned that we should get a GPS unit for traveling, and some day we are going to, but Damascus (and every city that is older than Minneapolis) has the property that you can know where you are to within 10 meters, and be holding the latest map in your hand, and want to get to a place 100 meters away, and not have any idea how to get there. I want to reassure the Asperger's sufferers that it really doesn't help to get chummy with humans by asking directions. About one out of every ten people knows where he is right now. I had four guys leaning on a taxi assure me that we were driving on Sharia Souk Saroujeh and we turned out not to be. Fortunately there were more guys on the other side of the street who said it was al-Malik Feisal and it turned out pretty academic because when you get to the main intersection you can't go across and you can't turn in any useful direction, and when you call the hotel and they say they will send a boy over to fetch you (because remember, you are only 100 meters away), they don't, or maybe they don't know where you are. I don't know what happened there. Dave hailed a taxi and put me in it with instructions to go to the al-Diwan hotel so he could follow, and the taxi driver took me to the al-Iwan hotel. But the man at that hotel had heard of the other one, which was just down the street, and pointed it out with good directions. Dave looked at the room but didn't like it enough so he checked the hotel across the street but we came back to the al-Diwan and they gave us a room that smelled like paint so we made them give us another one and it doesn't smell like paint and only had one tiny cockroach who is probably trying to get to the al-Iwan.

We have just got back from the National Museum. It is exhausting. The way in which fragments of basalt weave themselves into the story of our own history! and the marginal notations in simple French (fortunately)! The garden especially is amazing, go find a website and a virtual tour, you know there's no reason any more to get out and do this stuff, you can experience it all on wikipedia or someplace and if you have a slow enough connection you can even simulate the part with finding the hotel.

We should go to dinner now.


Ray on 05.23.04 @ 09:17 AM PDT [link]

America No Good! 100!

I got Ray a digital SLR because his other digital camera was dying, and digital SLRs got affordable this year. Today we discovered their dirty secret -- they get dust on the sensor, probably more so in the desert. It probably happens when you take advantage of their lens interchangeability (one of the whole points), which lets in a little dust, and after a few pictures with the mirror flapping around, that dust settles on the "low-pass filter" in front of the sensor. We'll have to get some compressed air or something so we can keep it clean. Meanwhile, Ray will have to Photoshop some dark blotches out of many of the sky shots he took today. After one cleaning with a tiny blower he took a test shot of the sky and there was a new dark spot -- we examined the picture on the computer and the dark spot fortunately turned out to be an airplane.

So we continued with the day as scheduled, checking out many of the ruins in Palmyra, the top tourist destination in Syria. It started out as an independent city between Persia and Rome from about the 13th century BC until the third century AD. It fell to Rome in 267 AD, to the Muslims in 634, and to an earthquake in 1089. It was rediscovered in 1678, and excavations began in 1924. There's a main colonnade with enough columns reconstructed that you can get an idea of the extent of it; lots of temples large and small, and some pretty interesting sarcophagi.

Ray observes: "We finally ran into a rude person today, and it will surprise no-one who has ventured farther into the world than his bedroom that the person was a French tourist. Where do they mint these guys, anyway? It seems that anywhere you go, you are going to run into some middle
aged pompous asshole who is insulting and berating everyone in a particularly French way, and cannot be pleased. He will be yelling at a waiter or a bellhop --- in the case of today he was yelling at us, or more particularly "people like you" which I found difficult to parse since there don't seem to be a lot of people like us in Palmyra judging by the way children flock around saying something like "Baba Nuit" which may either be Syrian Arabic for Ali Baba or for Babi Yar, I don't know which. When you go on an eclipse expedition you run into children that haven't a lot of experience with tourists, in the southern Philippines or rural northern Chile; but Palmyra is one of the world's destinations, a UNESCO World Heritage site, about as untouristed as Disneyland. The buses pile in every hour of the day and you're hard pressed for a camera angle without a cheerful Italian in khaki shorts whistling and shouting Buon Giorno! Where do they mint those guys, anyway? Speaking of mint, the big tea here seems to be chamomile."

Like most tourist destinations, touts are everywhere. Here there's lots of touting from people's storefront -- the owner of the place we ate dinner tonight followed a couple of Eurotourists down the street, and sure enough, hooked them and sat them down in the restaurant. We had lots of touts with "hospitality dates" which led to us buying a kilo of them (there are lots of date palms here). A few people were selling T-shirts with various Syrian alphabets (including Palmyrene) on it; Ray hoped that his wearing one today (besides being his only clean shirt) would preclude further offers to sell us more, but alas, one guy tried several times. But the number one category of touts around here are boys selling postcards. Packets of 20 postcards are sold in museums for 50 Syrian pounds ($1.00) but these boys will ask for 200 ("OK, 100"), and rarely even offer them for 50. One of them today, perhaps having decided that he was doing me a favor (leading me to a toilet someone else had already pointed out) or imagined that I had promised to buy some, kind of lost his temper when he became too frustrated with my continued refusal to buy any more postcards. "200! OK, 100!" "No, I don't need postcards" ... then he suddenly switched into "America No Good. America Fights Iraq. America No Good. 100!" but I still didn't buy any.


Dave on 05.21.04 @ 11:48 AM PDT [link]

Hospitality

I feel like I need to apologize to the Syrian Nation for being so impenetrable of motive. The hospitality here is much spoken of, it appears on the coinage and in the visages of George H. W. and George W. Assad whose posters are most places; but it's all kind of wasted on me because I don't like people all that well and like that. There isn't a lot of English spoken here, which makes it kind of hard to explain why we are leaving suddenly to a Bedouin who comes up in the middle of the night when we're trying to look at Jupiter in Frank's Questar, and invites us with gestures and a few words to come into his courtyard, which is not only more brightly lit than the open highway with its late night trucks headed out to Baghdad with ersatz Sumerian antiquities to sell to the American tourists there, but has the added advantage of having a guy there with a welding torch performing some midnight repair & incidentally stick it to whatever dark adaptation you have left after the headlights and trying to see the Green Flash from the citadel here in Palmyra (too hazy). And we've left behind the usual trail of jilted carpet sellers and post card hawkers at the citadel who wanted 250 Syrian pounds for 21 cards, which same packet was for sale at the ticket desk for 50.

We get waved at a lot. Flash mobs of little kids can appear out of nowhere to practice their pronunciation of "Hello" and "welcome". Someone decides that these are important phrases of English to know. Another English phrase that seems to get taught to everybody is "be careful". The sidewalks are uneven. Some of them have been in use for 6000 years. We went to Ebla yesterday --- you'll remember this as the source of much of what is known about immediately pre-Hittite Syrian writing on account of the vast numbers of tablets found there. At the site there is pretty much of nothing, it's a working archaeological dig managed by the Italians and you aren't permitted to go much of anywhere so you stand on top of this little hillock that used to be a citadel with an intellectual appreciation of the Importance of the Site and look at the waving wheat fields on the hills in the distance and then you realize that there actually are no hills around there, that the wheat is growing up the sides of ruined walls 22 meters high and at least that thick and that within and without those walls several hundred thousand people lived and worked and invited tourists in for tea --- a real Ozymandias Moment.

Today we drove to Crac des Chevaliers, a fortification of one of the previous Crusades to the one currently going on. The mountains look pretty much like the Coast Range in California. The Presidio won't last nearly as long. Our guide didn't speak English much but he took us to the important places. Arabic speakers don't take vowels seriously. I have a theory about languages that people in the desert concentrate on the consonants whereas people in Hawaii and the like deal mostly in vowels. Anyway, the guide would say the consonants in the word in the right order but would put in whatever vowels he felt like, like "Kutchan" for "kitchen". It's not regular like Inspector Clouseau either, it seemed to be whatever he felt like at that point in the sentence.

Now we're in Palmyra -- we went up to its fortification and looked at the main ruins area and the town in the sunset light. Tomorrow we'll explore it in more detail. Once again, improbably, there's an internet cafe right across from the hotel.
Ray on 05.20.04 @ 01:01 PM PDT [link]

Ruins

It was quite unexpected that there would be an Internet cafe right next to the entrance to our hotel in Hama, but there was, so here's a little post. It seems much less likely that we'll find one out in the desert in Palmyra the next two nights.

This morning we picked up our rental car, a dark green Renault Clio, and headed out from Aleppo to see various ruins. The challenge was that there was almost no Roman script with place names or road names anywhere we went, and invariably we had to ask somebody directions, who would either wave and point, or perhaps speak in French. The best example was when we arrived this evening in Hama, where we were completely lost. We stopped in front of a candy store downtown and asked how to get to our hotel -- addressing a kid behind the counter, the owner waved his hands and pointed, and then the kid got in our car and guided us the two blocks from the candy store to the hotel. We went back later and got some really good candy.

We saw the Citadel of San Simeon, ruins of a Christian chapel from the 5th century. The monk who lived there sat atop high pillars for the last 36 years of his life. All that was left of this pillar was a large boulder -- apparently pieces of it have been claimed as souvenirs over the years.

Then we drove to Ebla, an ancient city from the 3rd century BC. It's been being excavated continuously for the last 40 years. You can see where the city walls used to be -- wheat fields now gradually slope up to the top of them.

Then we went to Apamea, a Roman ruin from 64 BC. They set up a colonnade which extended for about a mile. Many of the columns are still standing, and it's a little surprising to see them all of a sudden. It was a particularly nice place to take pictures, especially late in the afternoon, and we'll see soon how they came out.

Ray suggested that there should be "tomato tourism" -- all the tomatoes we've had in Syrian salads have been top-notch, and for people who appreciate that, this is a great place to come.
Dave on 05.19.04 @ 12:10 PM PDT [link]

Aleppo

We made it to Aleppo yesterday morning. We were asked several times after we got off the plane "are you sure you're not going to Damascus"? We slept from about 5 am to noon, and by the time we'd walked around and dealt with the essentials of money, orange juice, and coffee, it was already 4 and we realized we had to go see the Citadel right then since it closed at 6 and is closed on Tuesdays.

The Citadel is a big hill surrounded by a moat in the middle of Aleppo. It's going through lots of restoration, but there was still lots to see. Great views of Aleppo from the edges. We wandered around aimlessly and found lots of interesting rooms but probably should have had a guide to find the best places.

Several nice young guys independently struck up conversations with us, which all ended with an invitation to check out their carpet shop. All of them were from the same carpet shop, in fact -- we looked at some of them today but there wasn't anything that we had to get. One of them gave us a tour this morning of the market district.

There's not very much Internet in Aleppo, but warnings that yahoo.com was blocked seem not to have happened. There is a lot of Middle Eastern food, from shwarmas on the street to a nice restaurant with six pages of appetizers and one of main dishes. It also had a fascinating cave-like bar downstairs which we were told was connected by tunnels to the Citadel a mile away or so.

Tomorrow we get a car and start driving around Syria, probably seeing the ruins of the Crac des Chevaliers, Apamea, Palmyra, and Bosra. It wasn't easy to find the Internet in Aleppo, and it will probably be even harder in these other places. But we'll write when we can.
Dave on 05.18.04 @ 06:28 AM PDT [link]

Where It's At

We spent Saturday once again consuming art in London, after previewing Egypt by looking at the "Cleopatra's Needle" obelisk stolen by England in the 19th century, now mounted along the Thames. First we saw the World Press Photo expo, a show of award-winning news photography. I especially liked the nature shots: a clean Icelandic salmon fishing pool vs. a dirty British Columbia salmon farm with a close-up of sea lice in a salmon eye; volcanoes in Kamchatka; an amazing storm photo of Chicago. There were many other pictures from Iraq and Liberia and elsewhere in the world as well, many featuring burn victims.

Then we went to the Saatchi gallery, which shows works from the artists who made news a few years ago with the "Sensations" exhibit in Brooklyn with the sheep in formaldehyde and the paintings featuring elephant dung. Besides these pieces, there were a few by Ron Mueck, who makes amazing polyester resin super-realistic reproductions of people at various scales, complete with individual arm and leg hairs and veins under the skin, and Duane Hansen, who had life-size reproductions of people who you would have initially thought were just visitors to the museum. One room featured 34 African tribal carvings, but when you look closely you see that they all have in them somewhere the golden arches, or a bag of french fries, the head of Ronald McDonald, etc.. Another room was simply three feet deep in engine oil, except for a little walled-off area you could walk into to see the reflections.

Then the "Time Out" magazine suggested there were a bunch of galleries at the Bethnal Green tube stop in the East End, so we went there. They were mostly OK, but one was exceptional. It consisted of three steel sculptures which looked completely random -- just lots of junk welded together, making no sense at all, except that a light was being projected on them from a specific direction, so that each one cast a completely non-random image on the wall. A friendly woman at the gallery from Finland told us that the street we were on, Vyner Street was "the center of art" in London, where all the best stuff was being produced.

Then we had dinner with Frank Colcord, who took us to an excellent pub/restaurant two blocks from his house in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Today we walk around London some more, then head to Heathrow for the red-eye to Aleppo. There might not be as many Internet cafes in Syria and Jordan, so we may not post as often, but we will when we can.
Dave on 05.16.04 @ 03:03 AM PDT [link]

just to let you know we arrived safely in London

at the same moment as several other 747's from various parts of the world identifiable by the airport shopping bags that their passengers carried (Johannesburg, Dubai ...). I like only this about Heathrow; it's among the few places in the world where you can hear as many languages being spoken as on an arbitrary street corner in Mountain View (the checkout counter at "The Milk Pail" for example) and it makes you feel at home that way. We stood in line for close to an hour and a half waiting for an improbably cheerful officer to give us the passport stamp (I want what she's taking); then another 4 hours here in town waiting for our hotel room to become available. I have been in hotels before that let you into a room you had reserved before the stroke of the clock on the hour that their check in time nominally is; but the Comfort Inn at Earls Court lacks the imagination, and it serves us right for going even so upscale as an American chain.

Nothing good has happened yet. We are still in the we forgot this/this broke/no sleep phase of the mission. United's tourist class food has gone retro. Some of you may remember back in the day comedians would joke about airline food because it was all kind of a new thing and bad, like "can you hear me now?" --- United's croissantwich breakfast is that sort of fare; the British breakfast industry has put them up to it so you'll be favorably impressed by English meals.
Ray on 05.14.04 @ 10:45 AM PDT [link]

Itinerary

Here's our itinerary, showing where we're planning to spend each night. It's all subject to change, but this is the basic idea.

	May 14-16		London
	May 17-18		Aleppo, Syria
	May 19		Hama, Syria
	May 20-21		Palmyra, Syria
	May 22-23		Damascus, Syria
	May 24-25		Petra, Jordan
	May 26-27		Wadi Rhum, Jordan
	May 28		St. Catherine, Egypt
	May 29-30		Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
	May 31		Hurghada, Egypt
	June 1-4		Luxor, Egypt
	June 5-8		Cairo, Egypt
	June 9-10		Dublin, Ireland
	June 11		Ballycotton, Ireland
	June 12		Killarney, Ireland
	June 13		Kinnitty, Ireland
	June 14-16		Dublin, Ireland
	June 17		Ballycastle, Ireland
	June 18		Douglas, Isle of Man
	June 19		Liverpool, England
	June 20-22		Blandford Forum (Stonehenge), England
	June 23		St. Malo, France
	June 24		Orleans, France
	June 25-27		Lyon, France
	June 28-29		Lausanne, Switzerland
	June 30-July 1		Strasbourg, France
	July 2		Brussels, Belgium
	July 3		London
	July 4		Home!

Dave on 05.11.04 @ 08:49 AM PDT [link]

Welcome!

We're going on a trip this year from May 13 to July 4. We'll be in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, where we'll watch Venus go in front of the sun; then we'll fly to Ireland, where there's a celebration of James Joyce's Ulysses, and then drive through England and France. We'll be posting comments from time to time letting you know where we are and what's happening.

Dave on 05.02.04 @ 05:51 PM PDT [link]