panic at the sfo/arrive in beirut

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Ryan and I started off for our adventure with one last look the apartment, our cube (which somehow, due to ryan's tetris skills and my pained packing of boxes, fit all of our stuff) and of course, our lovely "front yard" - dolores park. Breakfast one last time at DPC, and then we were off.

Our most stressful travel problem so far was the flight checkin at SFO. They wouldn't let us on the plane without proof of a return ticket from Beirut. We have a return ticket, but it is from tel aviv, which is not OK with the folks who let you in to Lebanon. They were quite sure Lebanon would not let us in without it, so two super nice airline ladies took pity on us and sold us a refundable ticket from Beirut to Rome. They had to use some magical set of characters (#J27?) to unlock the 1980s software they're using in order to print us the ticket.

With that, we were a bit late but made it to the plane and took off for leg one to newark (5 hours), leg 2 to Rome (7 hours plus 2 hours delay), and leg 3 to Beirut. Customs was fine and didn't ask for our ticket, but it was good for a backup.

We arrived in Beirut a few hours later than expected, at about 7pm, but we still had a car waiting for us sent by the hotel, with all of my full names on it. We immediately fell in love with this city - it's got so much energy and is dense and full of people and shops and interesting architecture. You do see evidence of the wars everywhere, but also the sheer determination to keep rebuilding. The traffic is innnnnsane. There are no traffic signals anywhere, so people just honk and drive around each other. To cross the street, you basically have to run out into traffic and wait for people to stop (which they do, but it's hard to get used to). This is despite the fact that the streets are paved with beautiful brick pavers!! Helllooooo, slow down, it's for pedestrians! 😊

Our hotel is in the western part of the city, called Hamra, which is a commercial area just south of the University and about a 10 minute walk from the western waterfront. Tonight's dinner is at a nearby local chain called Barbar. Ryan saw about 20 delivery bikes parked outside and decided it must be good, and it was - super good hummus and chicken shwarma and stuffed grape leaves -- we were in total heaven.

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