Thanks everyone for their lovely, lovely comments on my blog. I haven't tried the coffee suggestion yet but I will do soon. :D

It's good to be back and reliving memories of Syria. It's just over a year since I first arrived in Damascus airport at 4am with my suitcase and wondering just what the Hell I'd gotten myself in for. I was used to airports like Stansted, Heathrow, Gatwick, Barcelona or God help us Charles de Gaulle and JFK. Damascus was a little... different. Low-ceilings, pokey, slightly dingy with green plastic plants (Fake Plastic Trees was running around my head at this point) and loads of bored-looking blokes in quasi-military uniforms.

I was a little worried, a little unimpressed and let down. Where were the dancing girls? Snake charmers? Sand-dunes, camals and bedouin dressed in blue? Oh well. I got a taxi from the stand inside the building (I didn't know it was half the price from a taxi outside back then :( ) and we headed along the airport road.

It was then that I saw the roadsigns pointing the way to Lebanon and Jordan and I started grinning like an idiot and didn't stop till I got to the hotel.