After spending three weeks back home in England, in Staveley, I was in need of a new adventure so I started looking around for new places to visit. It had to fit in with a three day period before I flew back to the US. What caught my attention was a flight to Beirut on Middle East Airlines. It left Heathrow late on Thursday evening and arrived early Friday morning, and left early Sunday in time to catch my flight to the U.S. allowing me 2 full days in Beirut.
So I bought the ticket, downloaded the Lonely Planet guide for Lebanon, and off I went. There were several warnings about travel to Lebanon and neither the British nor the American Governments seemed to recommend it. Even the guide book had warnings in several sections to avoid travel to certain regions like the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the southern border regions with Israel. My concern was not eased when the day before I left President Trump enraged everyone in the world except the Israelis by announcing the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
In actual fact, reading all the warnings against travel did make me a little worried about visiting that region but after boarding the plane I never gave it a second thought and I felt completely safe the entire trip.
The flight from Heathrow was late at night and didn't arrive in Lebanon until 4:30 am Friday morning. I stumbled around the airport for a while before getting a taxi to my hotel, The Mayflower. When I arrived at the hotel the taxi meter was about $25 and I thought I was being generous with a $5 tip. Not so and the taxi driver began to complain that it wasn't enough. Taxi drivers drive me nuts - they frequently provide the worst introduction to a country.
I had prearranged to go on a walking tour of the city and was due to be picked up at my hotel at 8:00 am, so I dozed in the lobby of the hotel (it being too early to check in to my room) until they came to pick me up. The tour company, Nakhal, run several tours and they have a fleet of vans doing the pickup at various hotels and they then drop everyone off at their office where people board various vans and buses for the different tours. My group went on a short ride into the center of the city where we started our walking tour.
We first visited a Roman site. The tour guide explained that Beirut has been a city for a long time. If you dig down in any area of the city you find evidence of earlier periods of occupation be that Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Mamaluk - everybody has built there.
Our little group of round 12 people are a motley group, including 3 older Croatian ladies, one of whom is severely overweight. She walks very slowly and I realize this is not going to be much of a walking tour.
Our walk continues through a government building area where all the buildings are quite clean and well maintained and there is a strong security presence. Surprisingly there was the following Banksy-esque graffiti carefully preserved on one of the walls. Strange they would want to maintain such a political message so close to the center of government.
We passed by a couple of churches - a Maronite Cathedral and a Greek Orthodox Cathedral and moved onto the square where there is a rather splendid new mosque, the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque. I guess there is still a bit of religious diversity in Beirut, even after the Civil War. Former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri is buried in front of the mosque - he was assassinated in 2005.
Close by the mosque is the so-called Martyrs Square with its bullet riddled statue. Also close by is the unrestored Civil War damaged ruin of a Zaha Hadid designed cinema. It looks very interesting, all curvy. I hope they restore it. She went to school in Beirut.
That was it for the walking and we loaded back into the van and paid a visit to the National Museum of Beirut and we continued our walking around the museum. I wasn't in much of a mood for museums. A little drama was added when the overweight Croat lady fell on the hard marble tile floor in the museum. It took 3 or 4 of us to pick her up and sit her on a chair. Her wrist looked decidedly broken after the fall but she refused to go to the hospital.
Back at the hotel around lunch, I took a brief nap before heading out to explore the city some more. This time I walked by the American University - quite a large school in the middle of town, and I think quite a prestigious school. From there out along the sea shore to the Raouche area of town. From the cliff top there you can look down on the Pigeon Rocks - a very photogenic spot and full of selfie takers.
A taxi back towards the downtown area and I wander around the marina - very modern and full of large motor yachts. There is some serious money in this city.
There are a few derelict buildings around town; a sign of the Civil War which ended in 1990. These buildings are pock marked with bullet holes and have not been renovated. They are a stark contrast to the many modern and fully refurbished buildings in the downtown area.
More walking around town until it gets dark. I find a nice falafel shop on one of the backstreets and enjoy a wonderful falafel - what a treat. It gets dark early in Beirut and by 4:30 or 5:00 the sun is setting. I walk back to the hotel down Hamra Street one of the main thoroughfares through the Hamra district, an area of shops, restaurants, bars and clubs. It is quite lively and has the feel of a real party town. There are lots of American chains - KFC, Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, and the surprisingly popular Dunkin Donuts which was busy till late at night.
All feels quite safe and secure and I continue to walk around until late at night. In the hotel room, an indicator pointing towards Mecca and a sign on the nightstand saying that smoking of the water pipe narghile is forbidden. I wasn't planning on smoking anyway.
The next day, Saturday, I am signed up for a trip to Baalbek in the Beqaa (or Bekaa) valley so it is an early morning pick up in a van and transport to the same tour company for transfer to a bus to Baalbek. Climbing out of Beirut the whole city is laid out to the west below us, with the Mediterranean glistening below and the snow capped mountains to the east. It is a huge city with wonderful views from some of the higher neighborhoods. There are lots of new high rise developments, but also many abandoned homes that were once fine homes owned by wealthy people who then fled during the Civil War. These homes have been vacant and left to decay over the past 30 or 40 years. So sad to see them, the owners are living abroad, and the cost of restoring the derelict homes is likely so prohibitive they will never be restored but they can't be sold for any reasonable price so they just sit there.
We cross through snow covered hills and drop down into the Bekaa Valley, a wide fertile plane surrounded by snow-capped mountains to the East and West. Anjar is on the eastern side of the valley close to the Syrian border and it is the location of an ancient city from the Umayad period, (600-700 AD). The ruins are quite nicely restored and we spend an hour or so wandering around. The city is laid out in the Roman style with two intersecting main streets and a towered/pillared structure where they intersect.
Back on the bus we head off towards Baalbek, the main destination for the day. On the way we start seeing lots of Syrian refugee camps. They are typically container sized cubes wrapped in white plastic printed with the UN logo. Usually there were old rubber tires on the roof, presumably to stop the plastic flapping and blowing away. Some settlements were fairly large others were small, only 3 or 4 structures. Apparently the UN arrange for the positioning of the camps by buying or leasing the land. As we approach Baalbek we are near to the Syrian border and the security checks get more frequent. On the bus we are just waved through.
In Baalbek itself we pass a Palestinian refugee camp. This had been there since the 1970's and looked much more established - lots of Palestinian flags flying and guards at the entrance. That is a lifetime that they have spent in those camps.
First stop in Baalbek is the quarry where the Romans obtained their stone for building the site. One immense rock is partially excavated. I cannot comprehend how they moved such large pieces of stone.
We move on to the main site - a truly remarkable Roman complex with temples, courtyards, staircases, columns, all in remarkably good condition considering their age. Apparently the site was first explored in the 1900's by a German archaeological group. They found it half covered in sand. It is a remarkable site now and well worth a visit. We walked around taking pictures and receiving instruction from our very good guide and then we set off back towards Beirut.
On the way back we stop in Zahle for a meal - local food, lots of meat, very nice. I was very impressed by our bus driver who somehow managed to move his bus through a busy town with incredible accuracy squeezing through spaces you would imagine impossible for a large bus to fit.
On the way back to Beirut we stop at a vineyard to get a quick tour. They have tunnels for wine storage that date back to Roman times. The wine was quite drinkable too. The wine label was Ksara.
As we cross the pass to drop down into Beirut it was dark. I was surprised by the number of Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. They certainly make a big deal out of Christmas here.
Back in Beirut, I wander around the same Hamra area before getting an early night in preparation for the early morning departure the next day.
On Sunday morning it was a 5:30 taxi to the airport and an early flight to London. I had a connection to California later in the day. I was supposed to land in Heathrow, drive from Heathrow to Gatwick, drop off my car and get my flight to Oakland from Gatwick. Alas it was snowing in London and we circled Heathrow for 45 minutes before landing and then sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours or more before being allowed off the plane. While on the plane I realized I wasn't going to make the connection so I canceled that flight (thank goodness it was flexible ticket) and sorted out another flight from Heathrow back home. Fortunately I got a cheap flight with miles directly to LA with a connection to San Francisco. From SFO I rented a car to get home. I did make it home by 2:00 am Monday, but it was a long and frustrating day.
There are more photos of the trip here.
So I bought the ticket, downloaded the Lonely Planet guide for Lebanon, and off I went. There were several warnings about travel to Lebanon and neither the British nor the American Governments seemed to recommend it. Even the guide book had warnings in several sections to avoid travel to certain regions like the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the southern border regions with Israel. My concern was not eased when the day before I left President Trump enraged everyone in the world except the Israelis by announcing the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
In actual fact, reading all the warnings against travel did make me a little worried about visiting that region but after boarding the plane I never gave it a second thought and I felt completely safe the entire trip.
The flight from Heathrow was late at night and didn't arrive in Lebanon until 4:30 am Friday morning. I stumbled around the airport for a while before getting a taxi to my hotel, The Mayflower. When I arrived at the hotel the taxi meter was about $25 and I thought I was being generous with a $5 tip. Not so and the taxi driver began to complain that it wasn't enough. Taxi drivers drive me nuts - they frequently provide the worst introduction to a country.
I had prearranged to go on a walking tour of the city and was due to be picked up at my hotel at 8:00 am, so I dozed in the lobby of the hotel (it being too early to check in to my room) until they came to pick me up. The tour company, Nakhal, run several tours and they have a fleet of vans doing the pickup at various hotels and they then drop everyone off at their office where people board various vans and buses for the different tours. My group went on a short ride into the center of the city where we started our walking tour.
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| Roman Ruins in middle of Beirut |
Our little group of round 12 people are a motley group, including 3 older Croatian ladies, one of whom is severely overweight. She walks very slowly and I realize this is not going to be much of a walking tour.
Our walk continues through a government building area where all the buildings are quite clean and well maintained and there is a strong security presence. Surprisingly there was the following Banksy-esque graffiti carefully preserved on one of the walls. Strange they would want to maintain such a political message so close to the center of government.
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| Graffiti in center of Beirut |
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| Mohammed al-Amin Mosque |
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| Martyr's Square, Beirut |
Back at the hotel around lunch, I took a brief nap before heading out to explore the city some more. This time I walked by the American University - quite a large school in the middle of town, and I think quite a prestigious school. From there out along the sea shore to the Raouche area of town. From the cliff top there you can look down on the Pigeon Rocks - a very photogenic spot and full of selfie takers.
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| Pigeon Rocks, Beirut |
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| Marina District, Beirut |
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| Bullet riddled building showing Civil War damage |
All feels quite safe and secure and I continue to walk around until late at night. In the hotel room, an indicator pointing towards Mecca and a sign on the nightstand saying that smoking of the water pipe narghile is forbidden. I wasn't planning on smoking anyway.
The next day, Saturday, I am signed up for a trip to Baalbek in the Beqaa (or Bekaa) valley so it is an early morning pick up in a van and transport to the same tour company for transfer to a bus to Baalbek. Climbing out of Beirut the whole city is laid out to the west below us, with the Mediterranean glistening below and the snow capped mountains to the east. It is a huge city with wonderful views from some of the higher neighborhoods. There are lots of new high rise developments, but also many abandoned homes that were once fine homes owned by wealthy people who then fled during the Civil War. These homes have been vacant and left to decay over the past 30 or 40 years. So sad to see them, the owners are living abroad, and the cost of restoring the derelict homes is likely so prohibitive they will never be restored but they can't be sold for any reasonable price so they just sit there.
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| Bekaa Valley from Anjar |
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| Anjar |
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| Syrian Refugee Camp |
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| Stone Quarry, Baalbek |
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| Temple of Bacchus, Baalbek |
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| Roman Ruins, Baalbek |
On the way back to Beirut we stop at a vineyard to get a quick tour. They have tunnels for wine storage that date back to Roman times. The wine was quite drinkable too. The wine label was Ksara.
As we cross the pass to drop down into Beirut it was dark. I was surprised by the number of Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. They certainly make a big deal out of Christmas here.
 |
| Christmas Tree and Mosque side by side in Beirut |
On Sunday morning it was a 5:30 taxi to the airport and an early flight to London. I had a connection to California later in the day. I was supposed to land in Heathrow, drive from Heathrow to Gatwick, drop off my car and get my flight to Oakland from Gatwick. Alas it was snowing in London and we circled Heathrow for 45 minutes before landing and then sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours or more before being allowed off the plane. While on the plane I realized I wasn't going to make the connection so I canceled that flight (thank goodness it was flexible ticket) and sorted out another flight from Heathrow back home. Fortunately I got a cheap flight with miles directly to LA with a connection to San Francisco. From SFO I rented a car to get home. I did make it home by 2:00 am Monday, but it was a long and frustrating day.
There are more photos of the trip here.
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