The Orontes Valley and Palmyra Travel Guide

The Riad hotel is definitely the place to stay in Hamah.  Its competition, the Cairo hotel, which is right next door, is pretty much the same (especially since the owner is the same!!!) except the people (the manager, Abdullah is fantastic) at the Riad make it all that.  Even the owner's son likes to hang out at the Riad.  Abdullah arranges trips to all of the main destinations within a possible day trip.  The trips are based per car (or van), not per person, so if there are more people, the trip is cheaper. 
You CAN get a close up look of the 4 norias.  Just ask the guys at the 4 Norias restaurant and if they are in a good mood, they'll let you into the back area where you can jump the fence.  :)

The best hotel you can find in Hims (Homs in english or Hama in Dutch) is the Noria Hotel, named after what Arabics call Noria's (big weels of wood turning to keep the water moving). It's manager is very kind and for a very low budget you can sleep in this hotel that's worth more than what you pay, that's for sure! You can have breakfest any time you want untill noon, if you want to eat something in the common room, you can. All this is possible because the manager believes in this one thing: you act as if this hotel is your home!

If you go here, and it's very much worthwhile, much better than the one in Jordan. Make sure that if you get a guide, get one that speaks good english, we got one that could speak about 100 words of english, and boy was that a boring tour...he said the same thing in almost every room!

The restaurant close by is pretty good, quite a good feed, and it wasn't too expensive.