Kids and Castles


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Middle East » Lebanon » Tripoli
October 17th 2007
Published: October 24th 2007
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Dan says... This trip started out with a lovely little jaunt down Beirut's equivalent of state highway one. The open road driving here is the undisputed worse either of us has seen. If a car is passing a car, which is already passing another car and the only option for this first car is to drive on the extreme wrong side of the road to get past both cars at once, even if there is another car coming the other way, provided it is smaller than the first car, then its all go! After half an hour or so we managed to find a hardly used little coastal road down by the water. Byblos was a cool little town of paved streets, outdoor cafes and ancient ruins in a fishing village setting. Can imagine it could all get a little too touristy at certain times of the year though, and accommodation certainly wasn't cheap. After a look around we headed out of town for camping ground we new of. This place was cheap as chips and placed high up on the cliffs it gave a great view of the surrounding coastline. Nice to see Lebanon's sea and coastline has largely recovered
BeblossBeblossBebloss

Paved streets v nıce
after last years environmental disaster during the war.

The next day was some of our best riding of the trip. Just what you envisage when you thinking of coastal bike touring. Beautiful water, small towns, fishermen and few cars. We stopped for coffee at a little spot right on the waters edge and had a swim in the little natural lagoon, turquoise water, nice temperature, sweet! We passed through a big tunnel and then down the hill to Tripoli. Smaller and less known than the Libya version this city is still the second largest in Lebanon. Being almost entirely Muslim it differs markedly from Beirut. The most memorable things being misbehaving kids with toy guns and apparent total lack of concern for rubbish disposal.

Charging with a tail wind we raced for another border and passed back into Syria early next day. Following a back road to avoid the highways we found ourselves deep in hill country as we tried to make it to the big castle before nightfall. Exhausted and unsuccessful we pulled into a little restaurant in Marmarita for a bite and ended up being generously given a free meal and rest for the night at
The med Lebanese styleThe med Lebanese styleThe med Lebanese style

Veıw from our campground on the clıffs
the restaurant owners house!

Recharged the next the day we rode up a Baldwin street style road, whilst stones were lovingly hurled at us from the local kids, to the famous Crac, fair tale looking castle on the hill. Commanding a fantastic view over the surrounding country side it was easy to imagine why this castle was never breached. It took a good few hours to properly explore and you really felt like you were in some setting from LOTR movies or such. From here we concluded our bicycling adventure for there only remained to get to Aleppo and we were running out of time. We invented a new form of travel called bikehitching. You ride along a busy road and wave madly at any trucks or utes going by that look like they might be able to carry a couple of bikes without to much trouble. Using this technique we made it to Hama in no time and caught a bus from there to Aleppo.
Aleppo is a very nice city. Very clean and relaxed, we walked through the old city which was all closed up in the evening now that Ramadan is over, and we visited the citadel.




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Swım spotSwım spot
Swım spot

Spot the tanline
Swımıng ın the medSwımıng ın the med
Swımıng ın the med

This swim hole was right by a great little cafe and the water was so clean!
BackroadBackroad
Backroad

Avoiding the traffic
Trıpolı nıghtsTrıpolı nıghts
Trıpolı nıghts

The Lebanese Tripoli that is
The Lebanese coastThe Lebanese coast
The Lebanese coast

Town or country?
The ugly sıde of town: TripoliThe ugly sıde of town: Tripoli
The ugly sıde of town: Tripoli

Difficult to overstate how bad this is
Veıw from restaurantVeıw from restaurant
Veıw from restaurant

Marmarita ... or near enough


24th October 2007

Warning
Kees/Dan, Your commentries appear to be taking on a very pro Hezoballah/Palestine view, therefore i have reoprted you to the relevant authorities. Also apparantly in Damscus theres is a church where there is weeping statuate of jesus (no bullshit my mates seen it) so you should ask around and go see it, i think its free entry
26th October 2007

pro Hezoballah/Palestine ???
me?? actually when I was in Istanbul buying airline tickets, the Hezoballah top was the only clean thing that I had ...

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