Thursday, July 07, 2005

Are you breaking the door of this ancient Palace?



I'm home tonight, don't feel like going out....so I will be a bit active in here..... This is Kassr Al-Hirr Al-Sharki (The Eastern Heer Palace).... It's located around 100 Kilometer north-east of Palmyra...... in the middle of nowhere, we drove for like a couple of hours in the desert...nothing but a road and a desert ...and when I say nothing.... it's NOTHING!



Eventually, we arrived at the Palace, it was cool to see it in the middle of nothing! it stood alone.

We left the bus and took photos and stuff, unfortunately, the door was locked, so we visited the open part.... it was enough actually.

Yet.... 15 minutes later and a motorcycle arrived with a local guy, he said he was the Ministry of Tourism guy for this area! He wanted to sell us tickets, 25 Lira per person, we agreed if he opened the door for us. He said that he had forgotten the keys, so he opened a huge pocket on the side of his bike and took a metal hammer and wanted to break the lock!!
We were Ok with that, however, the non-Syrians with us (Canadians) were really shocked! "Are you breaking the door of this ancient Palace?"...it was fun..hehe...anyway, a friend of us tried to knock the lock but we stopped him right after the first hit..... yet, I managed to take a photo of that little "Syrian style site-seeing".....

The guy with the Mexican hat is Sinan, the short one is the Official Curator of that Palace! The third guy, I don't really remember, maybe someone passing by ;-)



By the way, the Palace was built by the Caliph Hisham in 628 Hijri and it has the oldest Omayad bath ever..


Ihsan

1 comment:

Yaman said...

This is a very cool picture, it reminded me of when I visited Tadmur with my uncle three years ago :) I think I remember seeing that palace.