Latakia
The port city where Syria goes to the beach. Corniche cafés, Ugarit where the alphabet was born, and pine forests above the sea.
Latakia is relaxed in a way the inland cities are not. People swim, eat fish on the corniche, and drive up into the coastal mountains on weekends. It has been a port since the Phoenicians, and the tell of Ugarit, ten minutes north, is where the first alphabet was written on clay.
The town itself is modern and busy. The reasons to stay are the sea, the forest of Slenfeh and Kasab up in the mountains, and Saladin's castle, Qalaat Salah ad-Din, on its ridge between two gorges an hour inland.
On a coast and mountains route this is two or three nights: one for Ugarit and the corniche, one for the castle and a mountain lunch.