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We wook up at 7:15 with the intention of take a bus to Homs early, but a problema of the hotel to process our credit card, delayed our departure until 9:45. The name of the bus station of Aleppo is Ibrahim Hanano, and the taxi was 50 SYP. After a short inspection of the luggage, we easily found the office of the bus company, United Transport, that have frecuent buses to Homs. The two tickets were 150 SYP.
The trip spend only two hours, and this time there wasn't sweets, but they gave all the passengers a bottle of water without name, but closed. The interchange of buses took place in Homs bus station, it was in the surrondings of the city and there wasn't anything to see, except the modern instalations of the station.
The first inconvenience is to locate a company of all of the station that has a bus to Palmyra. All the schedules and destinations boards are written in arabic. Surprisely, Yolanda, helped by the equivalences table between english and arab term in the Lonely Planet guide, located with success the correct one. Only 100 SYP per person and two hours of waiting, so we thought to be in the cafeteria drinking Lipton Tea and Mandarin Cola (CocaCola y Pepsi are forbidden in Syria).
In the bus to Palmyra, as novelty, we weren't the only occidentals. A couple of germans with their bicycles complicated the departure until they introduced the bicycles inside the bus. Just some meters to enter in Palmyra or like is known by the locals, Tadmor, the bus stopped and we had to go down because the driver said it was the bus stop.
We payed attention to him, and when the bus moved away, we noticed that he left us far of the village and suspectly, in front of a hotel. The owner of the hotel offered to show us the rooms. But we wanted to go to the Zenobia Jotel famous for to be inside the Palmyra ruins area, and the long list of archaeologists and distinguished guests. We said it and he offered to come with us in his car by 75 SYP, a crazy price for 500 meters of itinerary, but with that hot weather, we accepted.
When we arrived to Zenobia hotel, we felt a little disappointed, a part influenced by the hotel of Aleppo. The place it has much tradition but it seems old and tumbledown, and more after to see the room. Although the price gone down from 80$ to 50$ we prefered to try luck in the village, 300 meters far from the Zenobia hotel.
At the exit of the hotel, the camel-drivers came to us and offering their services. The Tourism Office is situated at the beginning of the village, essentialy it have a civil servant and a table with two brochures. They said us that Palmyra have two 3 stars hotels: the Villa Palmyra and the Heliopolis hotel. The centre of Palmyra consists in a main street without asphalt where the most of the hotels and restaurants are sited. When the locals saw us carrying our luggages, it rains the offers to go to their hotels, but we ignored them, because we had clear our destination.
The room disappointed us for the 50$ requested, so we decided go to the neigbour hotel, the Helipolis, to compare with this offer. This hotel was full, so we wanted give an opportunity to a young who was following by bicycle to us during the first moment we appeared in the villages, offering a clean and cheap room in the hotel of a friend.
The Palace Hotel, is basic, but for 20$ offers the best ratio of price-quality at sight of the other places. Finally, we negociated two nights by $35, breakfast included. There we met Mohamed, the owner of the hotel and Ahmad, the "oficial driver" of the hotel, who proposed us go to the arab castle Qala'at ibn Maan to see the sunset for $6. We accepted and after to leave the luggage in the room, we went in the tumbledown Mercedes Benz.
The sunset is over the sirian desert, an exceptional place and it allowed us to see for first time the dimensions of the ruins from the heights of the castle. After the visit we took some photos to a United Nations car.
At the returning, we concreted with Ahmad a visit to the Funerary Towers for the next day. To dinner we went to the restaurant Traditional Palmyra, recomended by Lonely Planet.
We had dinner in the terrace, Mansaf, a traditional bedouin course, based on rice and spicy lamb, that left us very satisfied after don't have luch. The dinner finnished with an enormous course of delicious watermelon, teas and a narguile, the traditional water pipe and aromatic tobacco, that put the final point of a very lonh and interesting day. The kind staff of the restaurant shown us a guestbook where travelers of all the world have left comments and in some cases, a souvenir, like coins, visit cards. A spanish had left an underground-bus ticket from Madrid (Spain) :)
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