Highlights from Lattakia

E: Seeing Mount Sapanu in the distance from our hotel room. Hellooo Baal.

M: Incredible views approaching our first (of two) Crusader castles - Qala'at Salah ad-Din.

E: Fransisco the rooster. And the rest of Ras Ibn Hani, a site c. 1200 BC across the road from our hotel. A sea-side retreat for the royals of Ugarit, and now the home of chickens. And lots of weeds.

M: The customer is ALWAYS right. Especially when its me. (E would like to note that she got a lot of reading done while M was being "right.")

E: Marching around Ugarit. TWICE. While M carried the backpack. In insane heat.

M: Climbing down into an incredibly well preserved underground tomb in the house of Yabninu at Ugarit. People buried their family members inside their houses at Ugarit. Bunches of tombs here and at Ibn Hani.

E: M realizing the the Arabic word for "hotel" (funduq) has the word fun in it. Cnat count the number of times I have heard "We're having fuuun in the funduq" in the past 4 days. Maybe not a highlight.

M: Finally took a microbus. Got off at the wrong stop. Not taking a microbus again.

E: Lattakia museum. Or not. Tiny, and the guard kept tapping his watch and shaking his keys trying to make me leave so he could go sit back down with his friends. So NOT how a museum should be run.

M: The View. Really trendy new resteraurant overlooking the sea. More nachos made from doritos, and I tried fish and chips.

E: The gate to Ugarit is too amazing for words. Also, I owe big thanks to M who was dumb enough to ask me what my impressions of Ugarit were and then nice enough to let me give him an hour long sermon about the importance and problems of the site and its texts.

M: Giant flying red insect in the cab with us for the entire 1 hr trip back from the castle. As if the ride was not already bad enough from the strong gas fumes.

E: I would just like to add the gas fumes + fear of heights + early morning + crusader castle + summer Syrian heat = whoa. M was way braver than me.