Adventures in Asia: Beirut, Jounieh, and Byblos, Lebanon

After our trip to Baalbek, Zahle, and Anjar on Tuesday, today we spent our morning in Beirut. We took an Uber downtown to have breakfast on the patio at a French cafe.

From the cafe, we went for a little walk, past the Mohammad Al Amin Mosque, which I assumed was old, but was actually built in 2008!

You get a sense of Beirut's history and religious diversity here, because next to the mosque is the old Roman forum, which is partially excavated . . .

. . .  the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral . . .

. . . and the Saint George Maronite Cathedral.

We continued working our way into the Foch-Allenby district, which is a very pedestrian friendly neighbourhood (unlike much of this city!). We saw pictures of what it looked like during the Lebanese civil war, and it has certainly come along way since then!

Really, though, we have been somewhat disappointed with Beirut, and so rather than continue our day here we caught an Uber out of the city and to Jounieh. Jounieh is a major suburb north of Beirut, and as far as tourism is concerned it is famous for its cable car that goes up to the statue of Notre Dame du Liban.

At first we were especially interested in the cable car ride, but in the end we found the shrine very meaningful to visit, too. Today the round trip cable car ride is 300,000 pounds--but apparently it was only 200,000 last week!

The cable cars have a fun "retro" feel to them and seem to be a popular leisure activity for lots of people. We met a tourist family from Iraq as we waited in line.

You get some great views of Jounieh, Beirut, and the Mediterranean as you ride the cable car.

There is more climbing to do once the ride is done, although there is a funicular you can take, too. We walked up and took the funicular down.

They have done a really nice job with the shrine around the statue--it is peaceful, nicely shaded, and there is calm music playing. There were many people sitting and praying and reflecting here. I climbed up to the base of the statue for the view from the highest point.

It was around 13:00 when we came back down, and we were not ready to go back to Beirut yet. We had heard good things about Byblos, and it was just another 15 minutes up the highway, so we figured we could head there for lunch. The same Uber that had brought us from Beirut was waiting in the parking lot and picked us up. The driver suggested he wait in Byblos for us and that we pay him the Uber rate directly for the trip back to Beirut and cut out Uber. This seemed reasonable and convenient, so we agreed.

Byblos is one of the oldest cities in the world (continuously inhabited since 5000 BCE, and perhaps originally settled as early as 8800 BCE!), and apparently the birthplace of the Western alphabet. The Uber dropped us off by the fishing harbour, just outside of the old city. 

We walked up from the waterfront into the old city.

We did not visit it, but we walked past the Byblos citadel, which crusaders built in the 12th century.

There are lots of fun and interesting shops and cafes lining the streets of the old city.

We ate lunch in the shade on a patio and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere. Byblos has a much different vibe than the hyper bustle of Beirut!

We met our Uber back down by the harbour, and he encouraged us to walk out on the pier for some pictures back towards Byblos before we left.

It ended up being something like an hour from Byblos back to our hotel thanks to Beirut traffic. We drove by the site of the 2020 explosion which was so devastating to Beirut and the Lebanese political and economic situation. The photo isn't good, but you can see the roof-less warehouse and destroyed storage silos over the concrete barrier below.

I paid the driver $10 USD for the trip from Byblos to the hotel, so Uber is a super affordable way to explore Lebanon! 

Adventures in Asia: Anjar, Lebanon

From Baalbek we drove an hour or so south to Anjar to visit the ruins of a royal Umayyad city. 

On the way to Anjar we went through the town of Riyaq, which for a time was a major transportation hub along the Damascus-Beirut railway and with an airport originally built by the Germans during World War I. Nowadays it hosts a base for the Lebanese air force.

We also passed more refugee camps, farms, and sheep herds. In the photos below, besides the sheep, you can see glimpses of the UNHCR tarps that are ubiquitous in the refugee camps. 

Our guide, the Armenian archaeologist, is actively working at the Anjar site, so it was pretty cool to have him tour us around.

The Umayyad dynasty ruled much of the Arab world in the 7th-8th century CE from Damascus, and Anjar was built as a summer getaway by Caliph Walid Ibn Abd Al-Malak. It is only a few hours from Damascus (about an hour by car nowadays) and at a higher, cooler elevation. It was also at the crossroads of the Damascus-Beirut and Homs-Tiberias trading routes. Archaelogists have done a lot of work over the last few decades excavating and reconstructing portions of the palace, city streets, shops, baths, and so on. 

Our guide left us in Anjar, which is where he lives, and the driver took us to the largest population centre in the Bekaa valley (and third largest city in all of Lebanon), the Christian city of Zahle. Here, we ate a delicious lunch at Casino Arabi. It would be hard to list everything we ate, but it was standard Lebanese fare--hummus, baba ganouj. stuffed vine leaves, fattoush, various kebabs, and so on. 

Our final tour stop was Lebanon's largest winery, just outside of Zahle.

We had a quick tour of the tunnels and cave here, where historically the Jesuit monks who started the winery aged and stored wine. 

After the tour we were served some wine samples in the gorgeous bar upstairs. Overall the winery tour was a bit disappointing compared to some I have done in Canada, mostly because it felt rushed. But, it was still cool to get to see a Lebanese winery and sample Lebanese wines. Also, Chateau Ksara has one of the most . . . engaging? . . . websites I have ever visited: https://chateauksara.com/Intro/.

Back in Beirut we had a drink and watched sunset by the Pigeon Rocks.

After dinner, I was eager to figure out how to use Uber paying with cash (credit card would charge the official exchange rate for Lebanese pounds instead of the black market rate, and would therefore make any trip exorbitantly expensive). We decided to head to a bar on Beirut's famous Armenia Street, about 15 minutes across town. All went well with the Uber there and back (more or less, anyway; on the trip there the driver asked for more money than the app said, and seemed to suggest that Uber was behind on the exchange rate [this is quite possible given how quickly the rate changes, but I was not going to comply with paying more than the quoted price]), which was great because it will make our plans tomorrow much easier if we can reliably use Uber.

Adventures in Asia: Baalbek, Lebanon

From Lefkara on Monday we drove back to Larnaca airport to drop the rental car and catch a short Cyprus Airways flight to Beirut. We had a great late afternoon view of the city as we came in to land.

This is a view of the corniche and Beirut's famous "Pigeon Rocks."

We took a taxi through the awful Beirut traffic to our hotel, not far from the corniche. My first excursion out was to change money; in some ways the terrible inflation situation in Lebanon seems to dominate everything, or at least an awful lot of daily life. Officially the rate is pegged at $1 USD equals 15,000 Lebanese pounds, but in actuality I received 80,000 Lebanese pounds for each USD. The black market rate fluctuates constantly, but is always significantly better than the official rate. Another factor is that the largest bill is 100,000 pounds, so four million pounds (just a single $50 USD bill) ends up turning into a wad of 40 bills!

With our pockets bulging with cash, we had drinks and dinner before turning in. This morning we had arranged to join a tour out of Beirut and over the mountains to the Bekaa Valley which lies between the mountains and the border with Syria. The tour is fairly expensive ($95 USD each), but was an easy way to see this part of the country (and we could pay with credit card, a rarity in Lebanon right now, and so that lets us conserve cash). We were picked up at 8:00, picked up another tourist on the way out of the city and headed up into the suburban hills over Beirut and through the mountain pass. I was surprised how much snow there was in the mountains. Our driver pointed out that at some times of year you can ski and swim at the beach in the same day in Lebanon!

We picked up our guide (an Armenian Christian--ethnicity/religion are super important in Lebanon), under an overpass in the town of Chtoura, which means "crossroads."

From Chtoura we drove north about another hour to the city of Baalbek. We passed through several towns and villages and checkpoints along the way, as well as small Syrian refugee camps. 

Our first stop in Baalbek was an old Roman quarry. Look at the size of that stone that was mostly-excavated but abandoned in situ!

From there it was a couple more minutes down the road to the Baalbek ruins. 

Our guide is an archaeologist in the region, so knows the site well. It is an incredible place, with ruins from the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and European Christian crusaders, and so on, more or less all on top of each other. 

Originally the site was developed as a Phoenician temple for Baal (hence the name Baalbek), but it is the Roman Jupiter Temple that was built over top that is really remarkable and incredibly massive--it was the largest temple the Romans ever built! Later, the temple was largely destroyed, mostly intentionally, by Muslims and Christians, but locals also converted parts of it into a fortress. These are all photos from around the Jupiter temple complex.

These six columns have been standing since they were first erected--the only standing columns at the site that have not been reconstructed. The columns at this site were the largest in the classical world in terms of height and diameter. 

By the way, the quarry we had stopped at at first was where the large foundation stones came from. The temple complex is raised seven metres, and some of the foundation stones are among the heaviest ever used in history.

Next to the Jupiter temple is the temple to Bacchus, which is mostly still intact because Christians converted it into a church rather than trying to destroy it. 

As far as ancient Roman temple ruins go, the site at Baalbek is by far the most incredible I have ever visited. Its sheer size is mindboggling, but it is also very well preserved and visitor-friendly.