TRAVELLING TO SYRIA - advice please!

Oh & how I wish I could be there with you, Clary!

Hmm, just been there three weeks ago - on my own as well. :wink:

I feel the same way you do, MsOlga! and Walter, I'm jealous!
Keep us posted, Clary!

Well, I'm back! Much of my time in France was spent with English people who live in a 1950s time-bubble. Certainly no Internet. The Dordogne is a beautiful area of France which has become completely colonised by the Brits, and some Dutch. I went to a lovely little town (Aubeterre-sur-Dronne) that has 1/3 Brit residents! And a lot of them don't really speak French and have English newspapers, cooking etc - I suppose they are there for the weather but I slunk around trying to pretend I wasn't English, although my car gave me away. Luckily I am told by French people that I haven't got an English accent!

Aubeterre also has a remarkable CAVE CHURCH - what is it in my stars that I went from looking at cave churches in Kapadokia to this one, and I've hardly heard of them before?!

Anyway I installed my son Tam in his palatial Hall of Residence in Paris cité universitaire - well subsidised French meals and well equipped en suite room, nicer than the equivalent in London, and then drove south and west (annoying to have to keep stopping to look at maps, so I went by the sun) and resolved to stay in a place with a funny name, in the absence of more pressing criteria. I found Oucques, which is a pleasant small town north of the Loire, and luckily missed the rather expensive hotel - finding instead a 'chambre d'hôte' for €30. On walking round the town I found the hotel and its restaurant, and had a marvellous meal for €18 - an appetiser of 'raie dans son cappucino de fines herbes' - mussels and thinly sliced celery in a creamy sauce - chicken and rosemary 'cakes' - profiteroles au chocolat. Fantastic! Why do the French do these things so well, so stylishly, and at such a reasonable price?
Next day to the Dordogne - my friends have no mod cons but they play a lot of word games with strange devices called pens and paper, so a good time was had by all. Four days later I left, and found another funny name - Nedde! An even more charming small town in the Limousin region, beautiful countryside, nice little hotel and although the meal wasn't as spectacular, it was still very good, and included magret de canard.
The following day I wanted to stop about 150 km from Paris, but after trying 8 hotels in 4 towns, with decreasingly amusing names, I went onto the autoroute and ended up in a Mercure (standard modern chain hotel with no character) - so I arrived back in Paris early the next day. Tam, a Libran, had decided he needed a trip to buy things for his room - with a blue theme - so we went to Ikea which was just like other Ikeas except that the French vocabulary I had acquired through literature in the 60s was woefully inadequate for asking for duvet covers (housses) and throws (couvre-lits).
As you may have guessed, I'm really not a sight-seer by nature, just absorbing the French atmosphere at a café next to Notre Dame was all I needed. The chestnuts are starting to turn brown, but the sun was still warm. Autumn in Paris!
And then back to Calais and a shockingly early ferry followed by another entire day of driving, coming to Devon as I did via Oxford and the other 2 boys.

Cave churches - hmmmm.

What a great travel writer you are, Clary, thanks for the touring. I think I know what you mean about absorbing the atmosphere. That is probably the most pleasant thing to do, wherever you are.

I haven't read all this thread and have no time this morning now, but I'm glad you're back home. Tam seems to have a great thing going over in France, and you too, with a new good reason to visit.

<nodding and waving>

Great to hear from you Piffka!

Thanks, my birth-twin. See you...

Thanks indeed for this episode in your travel logs, Clary!

(In Aubeterre, there's actually the biggest underground church in France. [They've got a couple more, but this dates from the twelfth century and is dug in a chalk cliff.])

Hi there Walter!!
That is the cave church whereof I spoke; it's amazing.

Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous! It's always a bright spot in my day to hear of your travels, Clary! I'm jealously soaking it all in. I may have to look up some of those places on the internet as I sit in my mid-western home with a cold! So glad to hear you're safe and sound.
We'll have to trade stories of those who live in the past! My hubby has a couple of maiden aunts whose home could be a museum of the 1950's!

Hi Clary!

Yes, I've noticed that pic on the internet - was actually trying to re-find my own photos from that place, but obviously they are dug up somewhere in in between the various boxes of some thousand photos ...

Walter, how do you post photos?

I scan them (since I only do analog photos, mainly at least), store them on the computer and upload them afterwards to ImageShack

Getting the photos online is a lot of trouble, but WORTH IT!!! Walter, the photos you've shared have been uniformly wonderful.

I have some already on the computer and will endeavour to do something useful with them in the next few days. It was easy in the days of the Gallery...

yep
Image Shack mostly works - or at least it uploads photos of Possum - and is there anything more important?

Greetings & welcome home Ms Clare!

Ah, another adventure finished. No doubt you are planning the next!

I always enjoy your travel writings enormously. Have you ever considered doing this for a living? I'm serious.

Oh I don't think so, Olgs, I only chat about food and stuff, I don't think anyone would really buy it! Unless I do something unusual and write it up - like cycling backwards across the Sahara! I had thought of something based on names, like staying in places with funny ones, or working through all places beginning with Q in alphabetical order or something!

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Here is a very unseemly photo of me on the island of Bozcaada; Tam and I went round it on a Vespa, hence the helmet. There were several tortoises galloping along the roads....

Do you know why these scooters were dubbed Vespas (why the company named them thus)?