We arrived at dusk, two Americans with no visas, midway through a shared taxi ride from Beirut to Damascus. The fact that we reached Damascus by midnight, after a two-and-a-half hour wait at the border, seemed like a stroke of luck.

“Since you chose not to process your visa with the Syrian embassy in the United States prior to arriving, we have faxed your information to Damascus,” a sour, Baath-mustached official informed us at the terminal.

“You may wait four hours, or stay in Lebanon.”

The United States isolates Syria internationally. So Syrian border officials make curious Americans wait to enter — I’ve heard horror stories as long as nine hours. Better that you are Egyptian, but not English, as Brits pay the highest entry visa fee.

Riding along the highway in a shared minibus down from the mountain border on one of the famed roads which all supposedly lead to Damascus, thoughts of politics gave way to my traveler’s imagination.

A trip to Syria may have to include politics — President Bashar Al-Assad’s portrait lines so many streets and highways, adorns the walls of all restaurants and businesses and is plastered large-scale on the side of government buildings (his late father, Hafez Al-Assad, makes a few appearances too).

But the autocratic gloss is quickly undermined by the kindness of everyday Syrians, of the charm of the best old cities in the Middle East, both registered in their entirety as Unesco World Heritage Sites — ancient Aleppo and Damascus — and a level of calm and orderliness that is a welcome respite from Cairo.

Three short nights in Syria were enough to dine in some of Damascus’s fine restaurants — all converted houses in the old city, with tables arranged around fountains in the enclosed courtyards that defined the splendor, and privacy, of Damascene merchants. The best of these is Elissar, serving Syrian and a few European dishes, with a full wine and arak list, in the Christian Quarter near Bab Touma.

But before long and very late dinners — restaurants won’t fill up until well after 10pm — two days in the Syrian capital revolve around the walled old city: strolling its quiet stone alleyways, chatting with vendors who don’t tug you to buy something, sitting in the marble courtyard of the 1,300 year old Umayyad Mosque, having already gazed into the tomb of John the Baptist inside, beside Muslims and Christians.

Where is the new city in all of this? Noticeably absent in its drab concrete. Our hotel was a few blocks outside the old city walls, across from the Ministry of Electricity, which is draped in oversized Syrian flags.

Guidebooks suggest a few sights around modern Damascus, like the National Museum — even more ambiguous in its identification of artifacts than the Egyptian Museum — but if the visit only lasts a few days, capitalize on the mosques, houses, hamams and alleyways of the old city.

It’s enough just to wander, from the square outside the Umayyad Mosque, framed by a Roman arch, through the Jewish and Christian quarters. It is worth also considering a stop in a bath house, interacting with the preservation of Damascus’s storied past.

Aleppo may not have the popular revere of Damascus, but it has one leg up on the capital: covered souqs, stone-vaulted alleyways that create a labyrinth of shops selling sweets, soaps, and fabrics throughout the old city.

From the top of the earth-mound of the Citadel, you can follow their path, abutting mosques and the tight-packed old city houses. At ground level, getting lost in the covered markets is the best way to spend a day in Aleppo.

Halab, as locals refer to it, takes the model of converting old city houses into restaurants and small hotels to a new level. It’s a shame the same has not been done in Cairo.

Dar Halabia is the only hotel currently in the old city, in the souq. In the morning, you can sit up above the old central courtyard, peering over the low skyline dotted with minarets, sharing coffee and croissants with French tourists. The immediate walk out of the hotel lands you on one of the central alleyways near the Umayyid Mosque, beyond Bab Antakia.

A late dinner at Beit Sissi — ordered without a menu, at the waiter’s recommendations — seats you among Aleppo’s fashionable crowd, in another converted house in Al-Jdeida, the “new” part of the city developed in the Ottoman era.

The appeals of Syria on the ground, in the old cities on a brief run through the country, are enough to reframe views of a county too marked by its government and regional politics, not to say these things should be ignored. In early May the drive from Aleppo back to Beirut took us through Tripoli, a quiet city on the Mediterranean, weeks before the shelling of the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp.

Daily Star