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Published: April 11th 2011
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Hey all,
Our Lebanon trip started with a 6am start; Susannah, myself, JC, Kim and Paul were the only ones going. Susannah and I were on cook group that morning but the others - Joe and Jason, kindly got up and cooked breakfast for us! We had yet another conversion rate to try and work out! Lebanese money is worth so little I ended up buying 33,500 lebanese pounds for just over US$20.
Coming from the Syrian/Lebanese border we could already see that Lebanon is a country of contrasts. Beautiuful big Italien-esque villas were literally a hundred meters away from people living in shanty towns. The scenery was phenomenal- snow capped mountains overlooking green fields and vineyards, such a difference from the desert scenery of Egypt and Jordan. First stop were the famous Roman ruins of Baalbeck. The area consists of ancient temples to Jupiter, Venus and Bacchus, and are among the most well preserved Roman ruins in the Middle East. Our tour guide of Baalbeck was great, very informed and very funny. Within the first few minutes of meeting him he was setting me up with his son and planning to marry Susannah! It was great to see
the ruins, the carvings were so intricate, I have never seen such detail before. It was almost easy to imagine how it used to look.
It was starting to storm as we were leaving the ruins so we rushed to the hotel for lunch. We were given a selection of mezze to start but there were too many pickled dishes for my liking, hummous as usual was delicious! We were given a selection of fish or chicken for our main. The boys chose chicken and were rewarded with a plate of spiced rice and chicken with a variety of nuts. We girls were looking forward to fish until it showed up!! Three small whole fish, battered, on a plate of salad, that was it!! We asked for rice and attempted to get some of the meat off the bones. I'm not sure what sort of fish it was but I have to say I wasn't impressed, or able to eat much of it!! On the bright side however, the Lebanese wine was particularly tasty!! Stopped by some craft stalls and tried to work out how much I paid for an item when I handed over 3000LBD and got 20
syrian pounds back. There were Hezbollah t-shirts for sale, not surprisingly as the town of Baalbeck is the headquarters of Hezbollah.
We headed back on the bus to Beirut, or Beyrouth according to the roadsigns! We were given a quick tour before we were left to explore by ourselves.We went to the "place of martyrs" to see a bullet-riddled statue, and then to a remembrance area for their former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was assassinated in 2005. We went to the Blue Mosque behind it, and were let in to look around after us girls covered up with robes and headscarves. It was stunning inside, beautiful elaborate decoration on the ceiling. After that we saw some of the biggest contrasts in Beirut- that between the scarred remnants of old civil war Beirut, and the regenerated areas right beside. The rebuilding has resulted in a lot of rather expensive designer shops taking up residence. We decided to explore around the last few destroyed buildings- the old cinema, a church and some residential buildings. The famous Holiday Inn is almost gone- being torn down as part of the regeneration of Beirut. We wandered around the streets dodging traffic as crazy
as Cairo and admiring the old architecture. There were a lot of beautiful old buildings almost completely neglected, but we could still see how Beirut was once the "Paris of the East". The old buildings appeared very French inspired and the roadsigns were all in Arabic and French- evident of the French mandate to rule before Lebanon became an independant country.
We spent a lot of time around the backstreets before returning through designer-land to make our way to the marina for something to eat. Service was slow (but the food was lovely) so we had our bus pick us up nearby for the return journey to Damascus.
A really great trip,
Orla
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