Whirlwind Trip: Part One

As expected, Lebanon and Syria didn’t disappoint. We enjoyed a short and sweet flight to Beirut – the so-called Paris of the Middle East – and later drove through the mountains of Lebanon to Damascus – apparently the oldest continuously occupied city in the world – before driving back south to Amman for a total of six days and five nights of vacation.

Here are the highlights of Lebanon:

~ I found Beirut a bustling capital reminiscent of Montreal or a European city with its cobblestone, balconies, shop-filled streets in Solidaire and Hamra and vibrant night-life among the bars and restaurants in Monot and Gemmayzeh.

I didn’t know what to expect of a city that had been torn apart by civil war for 15 years but I was surprised to find the people friendly, excitable and fiercely proud of their city and country. They love to party too and I doubted that they ever slept. If it were not for the bullet-ridden walls and mortar damage left as grim reminders of a troubled past, I would have hardly thought anything unpleasant had ever happened in the lively city.

~ We saw the site where Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated last year in a bomb blast. Twenty-one other people were also killed in the attack many Lebanese blame on Syria. The buildings on either side of the site stood as grim reminders of the deadly incident, hanging from their frames like skeletons with gaping holes in their sides. The scene gave me goosebumps.

Of course I took a photograph and got yelled at by a security guard for it. Thankfully he wasn’t like Jordanian police officers and didn’t demand to look through my digital photos and make me delete it. So I claimed ignorance, shrugged and apologized before walking away with the photo securely stored in my camera’s memory.

~ Driving north between the blue Mediterranean Sea and the rolling Lebanese mountains we found the traffic horribly similar to the jammed streets in Amman. Our driver told us the hold up was due to repairs on the sites where the highways had been bombed by Israel in the summer. We drove by several places where you could see the road had been torn up and I wondered how many unsuspecting drivers had been killed when the bombs fell.

~ Though no one in Lebanon could understand why we wanted to visit Tripoli – a coastal city an hour north of Beirut – I quite enjoyed walking around the stone walls of Assaraya al-Hamra (the Red Castle) and wandering around the city’s old souks. We explored the narrow lanes, peeked into the cute crammed little shops (saw a skinned cow’s head at a butcher’s shop with the tongue lolling out of its mouth!) and seeing Lebanese kittens perched in a doorway. Sometimes I get more enjoyment out of the simple places in a city that I do out of the big fancy tourist sites.

~ We had many of the sites in Lebanon to ourselves. I don’t recall seeing too many easily-recognizable tourists during our journey, but I suppose that’s expected after the number the media did to scare them all away after the summer’s events.

Everyone we talked to in Lebanon swore the country was 100 per cent safe for tourists, especially now that the UN has moved its troops in. The only disruption we encountered was tight security around the parliament buildings where the government was meeting to sort out Hezbollah’s demand to restructure. We heard there were threats of street demonstrations, but they weren’t carried out until after we left.

~ The Crusader ruins of Byblos (the city where the word Bible is thought to come from and the alphabet was supposedly created) reached out to the sea, only a little way up from where environmental hazard crews were still busy cleaning up oil spilled along the coast after Israel bombed the Jiyeh power station. In a small stone souk by the marina we found shops displaying fish fossils that had been collected from far up in Lebanon’s mountains and date back millions of years. Can you imagine all of Lebanon under water that many years ago?

~ We also visited the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon where we ventured into the dark and humid depths of a cave to see stalactites hanging from above and stalagmites growing up out of the rock. Leaning over the railing you could see chasms opening up in the earth’s floor that appeared bottomless. We also took a boat ride through a cave of water to view more of the strange formations. In the dark, low cave I felt like we were in Phantom of the Opera, navigating the meandering channels in a gondola under the streets of Paris. I know, I have a wild imagination.

We weren't allowed to take photos in the cave, or otherwise I would have.

The Grotto also had a pathetic little zoo that made me itch to call the Humane Society - if there even was one in the country. It had ducks, doves, turtles, a peacock, some monkeys and a dog (who I think was actually guarding the place and was not meant to be on display). The turtles provided endless amusement as one little guy tried his darndest to get a bigger turtle to move. He’d ram his shell into the side of the other turtle over and over and then when that didn’t work, started to bite his feet. We laughed.

I was disgusted though to see that someone had actually painted the shell of one of the turtles.

~ In Jounieh we hopped on a cable car and braved the heights up to the Hill of Harissa to visit the site where a 15 tonne statue of the Virgin Mary overlooks Lebanon’s coast towards Beirut. The view from the chapel was magnificent!

~ Our dealings with money in Lebanon was confusing. To begin with, the Lebanese lira look like monopoly money and the English denominations are camouflaged in the bill’s design so you’re forced to stare hard at both sides like an idiot when you try to pay anyone. Add to this the fact that everyone accepts American dollars and will take your American money but give you change in lira or sometimes a combination of lira and dollars! Without the exchange rate memorized and with our horrible math skills, we had no idea half the time if they were giving us back the right change or not.

~ At night we went to many fine Arabic restaurants where our newly acquired Lebanese friends ordered way too much food and we were forced to stuff ourselves – though we could hardly resist! It became apparent to us that this is just the way it is done in the Middle East. I blame it wholly on the fact that there are so many great mezzeh dishes that by the time you’re done appetizers you never have room for the main course. The seafood was amazing too.

~ While walking along the Corniche in Beirut we saw men fishing in the sea, catching little shiny fish. I wondered if they were catching their lunch and if the oil spilled farther north had reached the shores of Beirut. Some old men were swimming in the water and invited us in. We declined.

~ The trip to Damascus was a long and winding one through the mountains. I felt car sick (or was that the result of the previous night's partying...?). We passed by a huge bridge that had been partially blown up during the summer’s raids. Seeing that made me feel even more sick. That had been the main route out of Lebanon to Damascus.

~ We stopped in Baalbeck to see the Roman ruins there. On our way into the site we passed stands where men were selling Hezbollah T-shirts and paraphernalia like we were in some kind of political Disneyland. I then recalled we were standing in the middle of one of Hezbollah’s main strongholds in the country. I looked around and saw pictures of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah everywhere.

A little boy ran up to us and tried very persistently to sell me a pack of gum. I told him la, shukran, and he said in his best attempt at English, “Ma-bee lay-ta?” Maybe later. I told him in’shallah. Cheryl then laughed and asked, “Did you just tell that boy that God willing you’ll buy a pack of gum later?” I laughed too. It did sound funny.

After hiking around the giant columns and temples for an hour we emerged back into the street to find the little boy waiting for us. I had my lira ready and bought a pack of cinnamon gum. He couldn’t have been happier. We went over to a food stand to order a sandwich. The little boy followed and began to tell us his story in broken, but animated English. He was 10 years old, but he talked and motioned with his hands like an old man. We figured on the streets, old men were probably his best company.

He kept calling me madam and told us through charades how evil he believed Israel was and how his town was bombed during the summer. I couldn’t believe I was hearing about politics from a 10 year old. I wished he could be off playing innocently with schoolmates instead of selling gum to tourists and telling us stories of war. It just didn’t seem right.

Highlights of Syria soon to come...