Country Crossing

Syria had only granted me 3 days to cross the country and 1 day had already been gone. Laura decided to go with me until Aleppo, so our plan for the day would be leaving Damascus in the morning,, going to Homs, where from there we would catch the bus to Hons where the Crac Chevralier castle is then going back to Homs only then heading to Aleppo. Everything worked just fine excepted that we had to catch a taxi from Homs to Hons, but it was totally worth it the castle was absolutely amazing I kept thinking how it would be to play hide and seek there, lots of dark room, secret passages, stairs going up and down.
He managed to reach Aleppo around 6 o’clock cuz right after we got off the taxi he hopped into the bus going to Aleppo.
WE checked in the hostel we rushed to walk in the city since I would be leaving early in the morning. At that point I had spent all my 2000 Syrian pounds , Laura was lending some money until I found and ATM machine. When I finally did the machine said my request could be complete, I tried another one and got the same reply, then I realized the worst had happened, my bank had blocked my card, cuz I’ve withdrawing a lot of money overseas and I didn’t tell them I was going to go away.
On the fourth ATM machine we found there were this guy and a little boy. After talked to him he said he also couldn’t get any money, so maybe it was the ATMs not my card, he started to walk with him in a search for another ATM. It turned he was Syrian but had been leaving in Finland, he was there only to visit his family.
I was so relief when I saw the money coming out that whole in the wall, in the ended the problem was really the other bank not my card.
We had mentioned to Abdu ( the Syrian guy) that we wanted to visit the Citadel, the old part of the city. He said he would go with us but need to pay a little visit to his friend’s shop. Laura and I thought the same thing, “here it goes, now he will want to sell us something from his friend’s shop”. But anyway we decided to try and see.
He just wanted to say hello to his friend and after a couple of minutes we were in a taxi on the way to the citadel. He paid for the taxi, showed us the castle, the bazaar then we stop in a restaurant with a amazing view to the castle for some narguile and tea. He again paid for the bill, I didn’t even try to fight it cuz I know when they want to pay the bill they do. We walked us all the way to the hostel where we said goodbyes. I had to the shower immediately, I was more sticky than honey, sugar and glue mixed together.
We played some cards up on the roof where I met this two half Chinese/ half Swedish guys who were also going to take the bus to Antakya in the next morning so I decided to join them. 4:30am I had to be up, would barely had any more than a couple of hours of sleep.