It had to happen...

The day started with some souvenir shopping. Don't let anyone tell you all the antiques here are cheap. They're not.

Lunch at a coffee shop, and then Omar took me to a hammam, a Turkish bath. More about that later. Today I suffered from a bad case of food poisoning. I blame Zaman al Kheyer restaurant because Noor was sick too. It hit her quicker than it did me. During the day I started to get a queesy feeling but blew it off until around 10:00 at night, when it hit full-force while I was at the hammam. I'll spare you the details. Omar brought me home and I stayed in bed for 14 hours. Feeling better now, but still weak and unsettled, not at all looking forward to trying to eat. I'll stick with breads and other cooked foods from now on, even in the fancy restaurants. On the bright side, maybe I'll lose a few pounds!

This afternoon we're taking a bus to Aleppo and touring around there tomorrow, then that afternoon on to Palmyra. I'm going to go on with the scheduled plans more-or-less on faith that I'll be feeling well by tomorrow. I don't know how many opportunities I'll have to post while we travel, so you might not hear anything for a couple of days. If I get a chance I'll at least post a short note.