Palmyra by day

In short Palmyra was pretty cool, the lengthy review follows.

I woke up in the morning, went to buy some batteries for my camera. One thing I discovered about the middle east you have to be very careful what you are buying, quality varies from place to place, brand to brand, no where else was this noticble than in the realm of batteries, often when asking for batteries I would get more or less generic brands, "Panasonic" "Energy" "Super Power" and the like, all of which would provide enough power for maybe a day's worth of camera activity, which despite the cheap cost of the batteries was annoying. In Palmyra they had Duracells, so I stocked up, about 3 times the price, but worth every penny.

After that I headed to the ruins. Almost 2km main street was clear, but surrounding it could be found an assortment of fun stuff. Columns, statues, great big stone balls, it was pretty cool, a few temples dedicated to a variety of Deities were also within an easy walk of the main street, little to no vegetation though. Palmyra was built right next to an Oasis, which was clearly visible from the hills surrounding, but in the ruins itself you wouldn't have been able to tell that anything could live there with so little water, and yet they still do.

I checked out the Theatre, and the massive temple complex dedicated to Bel, the head God from the region. For these two features I was required to pay a total of 250 Syrian Pounds(about 5 bucks), money well spent, as they were both among my highlights of Syria to be sure.
I spent the day wandering around the ruins, exploring, and then I figured it would be a good idea to get a picture of me, something which as a lone traveller is rather uncommon. I set up my shot, and as I was taking it a couple boys came up to me and offered to take my picture. They did, and then they tried to sell me stuff, I claimed I had no money, but the younger one was persistent and wanted to make a sale of postcards. After about 5 minutes he tried a different tact, offering to show me how to wrap my Keffiyeh like a Bedouin(a group of which he was a proud member) and then he wanted to be in a couple pictures with me. Then I slipped, taking a pen out of my pocket I pulled out 100SD, which he immediately claimed should be spent on his postcards. He had been so patient and polite that I couldn't say no.
At that point I decided it was time to head off to check out the burial spires and climb a hill to watch sunset overt the ruins(something which everyone I had talked to about it highly recommended).
However as that involves a lengthy story and some addendum, I shall leave it until next time