The road to Damascus....

Is bloody expensive.
Talk, as it often does in our house, had led to questions of travel. Like a lot of discussions, solutions as to where we could go often lead to more questions than we have money to answer.
So first up for discussion was “what to do this coming New Year” surprisingly we have organised very little. I say we as in the ‘royal we’ Emin is King around here when it comes to organising. How many people do you know that project manage a holiday and place it on a spread sheet?

This brings me to a really funny story. Leyla was bought a game which involves solving puzzles. One of the questions was, if a mouse breeds after 2 months and each month produces 10 babies how many mice do you have after a year? No word of a lie, he had done the whole thing on an excel spread sheet colour coded and came up with the solution of…6001. Wrong answer, I mooted the point that it takes two to make a baby so the answer was in fact 1 I have of course omitted that this took me a while to realise and bizarrely I think Emin would have arrived at the same answer at the same time as I did. But it does illustrate that we are dealing with a man of Spock like pragmatism

Back to New Year. We had decided that our marrow had yet to defrost from last year and so he was keen on warmer climes. We will not travel east and so like a gazillion other Brits looked to the shores of North Africa. Far too expensive, bless him he even checked Hawaii. No good either, way too expensive. He then tentatively mooted that we go to his house in Cyprus so that he can carry on making it habitable, he wants me to do the garden, This was a surprise to me as I had previously been banned from Cyprus for bad behaviour, but it looks like time maybe a great healer. At first I baulked at the idea, but then my photography head kicked in and suddenly I could see the gist of a project forming.
I agreed as long as we could have 3 nights somewhere exotic. I fancied Beirut, but he thinks we will be blown up, so I mooted Jerusalem, big fat NO to that idea, he thinks the police will shoot him. So then I had a brainwave Damascus. I Googled hotels and fell in love. “WE HAVE TO GO” I cried.
Now Emin being Mr Logic Googled flights and this is where my dream began to unravel. Only BMI seem to fly direct, and he is convinced they will subcontract to some tin pot company and kill us all. Also the prices are rather steep; as we as usual want a round trip rather than a simple return. I am now keeping fingers and toes crossed we can go, It looks heavenly and in a bizarre twist I noticed it was featured in Vogue this month…..
If anyone would like a travel photographer please give me a call, I ask only for my expenses!