Damascus, Syria: June 26th-July 3rd

So, one thing I forgot to mention about Egypt was that although we had heard horror stories about it being dangerous, it wasn't at all. The Egyptian people are lovely and very friendly. Most of them do want money from you, but it is to be expected in an African country I suppose. However, they are more than ready to help you and actually really like to do it. They love tourist, and as Hend put it, "we don't have a problem with Americans, just the American government."

Anyway, on the 26th, we got on a plane heading for Syria. Now, by that point, Shane and I both were suffering pretty bad from something we had eaten. Egyptian food is really good, but something didn't agree with us. We were taking turns running (yes running) to the bathroom. It didn't help that we were pretty much scared to bits to go to Syria. We kept asking ourselves why we had scheduled to stay there for 7 days!

We arrived in the Damascus airport and went to the taxi stand and immediately were wisked away to our hotel. When we arrived, the hotel was pretty nice, a bit odd, but nice. The outside kinda looked like a putt putt golf pirate theme. After we signed in, two bellhops grabbed our bags to take us to our room. I thought that was a bit excessive, but then thought that maybe we had to go up lots of stairs or something. Nope!! They turned around, walked about 6 steps, opened a door and we all walked in. There was this huge stained glass window thing, and I thought, "well, that is the weirdest elevator I have ever seen." Wrong again! It was our room. We turned around, and there was our bed. So, our room was right in the lobby basically. It was a nice room though, and that was a good thing, because over the next 7 days, we lived in that room.

Our stomachs had issues for the entire week in Syria. We did nothing there except watch TV, do crosswords, go to the internet cafe next door (which is how I got all caught up on this thing), go to the restaurant upstairs or to another little one we found down the road, and sleep. On the 28th, for Shane's birthday, we did do something special...laundry in the bathtub:) We decided to celebrate his birthday when we got to S. Africa.

The staff at our hotel was delightful though. One of the bellhops quickly became our favorite and helped us do anything we needed. Another one kept saying hello to us in Korean for some unknown reason. But, perhaps the one who put the biggest smile on our faces was a waiter in the restaurant. He was super nice, but the best part was that he kept referring to us as "my lady" and "my sir." I guess you would have had to of been there.

I really wish I had more to say about Syria, but we literally stayed in the room for 7 days. One day we did attempt to go out exploring, but we really didn't find anything, and then, I am sure one of our stomachs started hurting and we had to go back to the room. It is sad that we went to one of the oldest cities in the world, and saw absolutely nothing. We aren't too bummed about it though, cause we managed to survive Syria and we had our own toilet:)

Today is July 4th, and we arrived in Cape Town, South Africa early this morning. We got picked up by a van from our hostel, and we are now at a lovely place called Cape Town Backpackers. We just finished cooking pasta and loved every min. of eating something normal. Shane's stomach has returned to normal, but mine hasn't. I am still having a lot of trouble, but hopefully it will go away now that we have normal food. Tomorrow we are going to try to book an overland adventure. We are looking at going on a 21 day adventure that goes from here up into Nambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwae. We are SO excited about that!

I am so excited to be caught up with this thing! Now, I can actually post things as they happen...what a concept!