wandering beirut

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On our first full day in Beirut, Ryan woke up earlier than me (for seriously the first time that either of us can remember since we met over 5 years ago). He headed out to find an internet cafe but it was only 7:30am so the only thing open was Starbucks. He checked in with work and did some quick coding and then I met him about an hour later. We headed up next to the university for breakfast and had some wonderful scrambled egg thing with lamb in it, and some kind of grilled cheese thing (not a sandwich, grilled cheese fans, just the cheese). I am seriously loving the food here - it's all lamb and olive oil and cheese and yogurt and lots of vegetables and good bread.

We walked around a bit more and caught a cab down to the National Museum, which is a bit southeast of the downtown area. It was a great museum, full of artifacts dating back to Phoenecian times, and had an even more incredible story. The museum was built in the late 1930s, but was very badly damaged during the bombings in the 70s and 80s. They managed to save the bigger pieces and mosaics by putting them each in reinforced concrete, but the buildng and a lot of the smaller pieces were in bad shape. As soon as the war ended, they started restoring the building and the collection, and now it's a great museum that tells a nice story about all the different empires that controlled lebanon at different times.

Most interesting fact: in 551 or so, there was an earthquake and tidal wave that basically destroyed all of the coastal cities. They rebuilt, but the Mamluks arrived soon afterwards, when the cities were still vulnerable to takeover. We also saw a bunch of cool videos which are online: www.quantara-med.org

Then we headed up to the Downtown area, where only 30% of the buildings remain from before the wars. They have completely planned and redeveloped the area, which is full off 5-story buildings with commercial on the ground floor and residential units above. We stopped in the information center and learned that they wanted to design a 24-hour downtown, so they kept about 40% of the land use area as housing, which is what it was like before. We couldn't find a before-and-after photo display, which was supposed to be in a plaza that we couldn't find, but I'm sure the transformation was incredible. They have a full 5 square block area which is fully pedestrianized with really, really upscale shops throughout. It does seem a lot unlike the rest of the City, much less full of noise and traffic and much fancier.

After that, it started sprinkling, so we stopped by some ruins of a Roman bath just on the edge of the new development, and then hopped in a cab back to our hotel just before it started pouring. We took a nap and wanted to see the sunset on the corniche, but was too rainy and cloudy for that. For dinner, we braved the rain to head to Gemmayzeh, where a lot of bars and restaurants are all along one street, and had a great dinner at this super lively place with live music and lots of people dancing around. Then we grabbed a glass of Lebanese wine at bar with a santana cover band playing and headed home about 1:30am, before the real parties get started, cuz we're old like that.

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