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Read my Travel Diary and other articles from a six week trip to Syria, Jordan & Egypt during October and November 1998

The Middle East

Si_lad
2004-03-26 20:27:02

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11th October 1998

I nearly didn’t get to Newbury for 7:00 as expected, as my London train was late and I consequently had to rush like mad to get onto the tube to Paddington for my connection. I only had seconds to spare. Anyway – I made it and Nick was waiting for me at the station. We had a quick pint at the Bacon, returned to his flat to double check everything (quickly) and then strolled over to his local – The Gun.

We settled into chat and a few pints before heading back to Nick’s flat where we ordered a very large Pizza and watched a weird 1980s film about cat people. We eventually hit the sack - alarms set, in anticipation.

12th October 1998 Damascus.

We rose at 5:40 a.m. and our taxi arrived at 6:15 as expected. The traffic along the M4 was already getting pretty nasty. For a while I thought we’d never make it in time, but we got to Heathrow about an hour before lift off. Check-in with Air France was easy and we managed to squeeze a breakfast in. We opted for a healthy breakfast – big mistake – paying lots of money for bugger all food. Nick had a bowl of pink grapefruit for something like £2.60!

Our flight to Paris was delayed and we only had about 20 minutes to dash between terminals (via duty-free) to get our onward flight to Damascus. The flight was fine – food was OK and we arrived in Damascus sometime around six o’clock in the evening.

Passing through Damascus airport was a breeze. I had sort of expected lots of security, hassle and bureaucracy, but we just filled a form in and passed through immigration with no fuss at all. Once on the outside we decided to try and get the airport bus, as taxi drivers were asking for lots of money. We soon found the bus stop, which was only 100 yards from the exit, and a Syrian lad called Zaid, who was returning from Paris (and spoke perfect English) helped us out. The bus was old ...