Cruise Lines

I might have given the impression in my last blog that Antoine, my first guide in Syria, was not much good. That is something of an understatement.

He was one of those people who knew his stuff - knew too much for your average passenger to be honest - but didn't have the English to explain it properly.

He would point to columns and explain they used to have statues of "guts" on them. He meant "gods". Of course! Trouble is, by the time you had worked that out, you had missed the next thing he was talking about.

No matter. It was not enough to spoil the two-day excursion from Tartous, first visiting Crac des Chevaliers, then driving to Palmyra, where we stayed overnight. Next day we had a tour of the ruins there, before the three-hour drive back to Aegean Odyssey, the one ship owned by Voyages to Antiquity.

My information on both places is patchy, even though I was trying so hard to follow what Antoine was saying, but the salient point about Crac is that was a Crusader castle, built over a 150-year period on top of a hill (hence Mohammed's trials and tribulations with the coach).

It is a stunning place, especially when you consider there were no cranes, lorries or other mod-cons to move the stones around back in the 11th century.

We saw the kitchens, ovens, dining room, cistern and food stores, the latter with four-metre-wide walls. Antoine said they could store enough food and water to withstand a five-year siege.

But that was never put to the test, although the castle was besieged three times. The last time, in 1271, because the Mamelukes broke through and took over the castle.

Palmyra, the City of Palms, is much older, dating back to the 3rd century BC and built on the crossroads of the caravan roads so it was very prosperous. At one end there was the Baal Temple with what Antoine called a "centuries" (turned out it was the sanctuary or inner sanctum where only priests and kings could enter to make sacrifices).

Below the temple, there was the city - or at least the 10% that has been excavated - with its triumphal arch, baths, magnificent original colonnaded street, below, agora (market) and theatre, where they hold concerts.

We also went inside a tower tomb, which had four floors, each with about 20 slots that in turn each held about seven or eight bodies, and a very ornate underground tomb owned by members of the Three Brothers' Tribe.

Back at the ship, one passenger told me he refused to tip Mohammed after our two-day expedition because he had the nerve to drive while talking on his mobile. Something the Brits never do, of course.

After all his hard work too. It made me embarrassed to be British.