From Aleppo we took a morning bus to Hama, a beautiful city south of Aleppo and north of Damascus. Under the morning sun and the shade of the palms, olive trees and fruit trees, Hama seemed to me an ideal Middle Eastern city. At first we had a little trouble to get the right orientation. A taxi driver came by and helped us to find the right direction to the clock tower at the town centre and our Cairo Hotel.
Cairo Hotel was clean and the staff was friendly. We joined one of their tour for the Crusade castles and archaeological ruins in the region. Our first stop was Apamea. The ruins at Apamea was massive. From the km-long colonnade we could truly appreciate the scale of the ancient city of Apamea, which was once a significant Hellenistic city with a population of half a million, ruled under the Seleucid kings before Roman conquest. Because of its strategical location on the routes of commerce, the city flourished in ancient times.
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