It’s been a little while since I posted anything, and you haven’t really heard much about Syria so far since I arrived just over a week ago.

This is partly because there’s just so much to compute and get used to, so much to write about and observe that I’ve been reluctant to get started or to work out how to approach it. Do I give you a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account? That could be very boring. A series of polemics on history, politics and religion wouldn’t really do justice to me being here- all that can be read and regurgitated from a library. So how to crack this?

The other, more mundane reason is a couple of bad kebabs which have had me staggering around and not really in the mood. When I have been in a fit state to do something productive, to be frank, I’d rather be off doing stuff than reporting back to you all. Finally, some of the thoughts I have published, I think are probably best left until I have departed the country.

Arriving in Aleppo, I asked the driver (through my Ukrainian-Arab friend) to drop me off at Baron street, which is where my Rough Guide told me all the budget hotels are located.

I chose one that sounded reasonable; the subtly named ‘Tourist Hotel’ and went for it. Baron Street in Aleppo, as well as being the place to find a good hotel also seems to be the grease pit of Syria. In a grid of narrow backstreets and alleyways off the 4 lane route into town, there seems to be row upon row of car workshops and auto-parts stores; dingy little grottos of dirt, cigarette ash and oil.

Occasionally, you might see a glint of silver amongst it all; a handle or lever for some sort of machinery where the layers of grease had been smudged away, or a welder whose sparks make the shadows flicker against breezeblock walls, exposing various posters of The President and his father. In the background you could hear the unmistakable catchy beats and repetitive wails of Arabic pop music on someone’s radio.

I found the door to my hotel squeezed in between two of these workshops, and climbed several flights of stairs, where the hotel lobby was located.

Hotel Tourist is somewhere between an English retirement home, a seedy Brighton bed & breakfast, and a typically British colonial outpost. The lobby is floored with periodically cracked terracotta tiles, and whitewashed walls adorned with long-faded SyrianAir posters from 1994. The space itself, dominated by wicker furniture that has seen better days and potted plants, along with tasseled lampshades, grandiose furniture and ornate blinds in need of a decent dusting.

All in all, I liked the place. It was basic, but clean and with a fair amount of character. It was how I pictured the Hotel Baron, an Aleppo icon up the street which had received mixed reviews and which I had decided to leave for another night.