I heart Beirut

First time out of Egypt while on this project. A buddy of mine happened to be planning a trip to Lebanon and invited me along, woo! We'd been talking about this potential trip for a while, but there were some, um, Hezbollah-occupying-downtown-Beirut issues in Lebanon that would have precluded any sort of touristy trip to the area (as much due to the gunfire and fighting as to the closure of most of the nightclubs). Thankfully, the most recent civil conflict reached some sort of ceasefire/agreement in May, so we quickly booked last-minute airfare to hop over while things were cool for the time being.

I knew a sum total of nothing about Lebanon before going there, so was pretty excited to head to an area ubiquitously raved-about by everyone I've met in Cairo. Dancing in my head before I passed out one the one-hour-plus plane ride were tales of beautiful mountains, forests mentioned in the Bible, gorgeous, erm, nightlife, and a cornucopia of friendly cultures accustomed to on/off military conflicts. Was really looking forward to a rockin' long weekend.

Waking up upon landing, I looked out the window to see the suburbs outside Beirut, with residences and offices covering the hillsides - beautiful city, check.


First thing I see after going through the arrivals customs (free visa, whee!) was this.



Very promising.

Plan was for three nights and two+ days touring the countryside during the day, and sampling the nightlife at, uh, night. Our first evening there we took it easy, taking some time to meet with my friend's driver-buddy in Beirut, plan out the next few days, and wander the city a bit without (yet) painting the town red, white, and green.

Eurocup 2008 was going on at the time, and Germany won a game the night we arrived. Apparently, Beirutis love themselves some football - the streets near our hotel (near the American University in Beirut) were filled with revelers driving around honking and waving German flags. At first we thought that maybe they were die-hard Germany fans....until the next night, when Turkey won, and we witnessed the same phenomenon but with different flags. The third night, Russia won, and all of a sudden Russian flags appeared in the clubs and everyone went wild.

I suspected that maybe people just loved celebrations and football, and kept a supply of flags around so that no matter who won, it'd be reason to go nuts. Hell, any relativism that results in constant partying is A-OK in my book.

Speaking of which, holy liver-cirrhosis Batman, Beirut is every bit as good a party-town as I had heard. [Random grammar/spelling victory insert - I somehow spelled cirrhosis right on the first try! Huzzah!] It was dang good idea to take it easy the first night, as I only got an hour or so of sleep the between the second night. After bar/club hopping for a few hours, right as me and my revelry-mates were ready to call it a night around 3 or 4 am, one of the fine fellows working at the bar took it upon himself to show us an even better time. I don't know how my mangled Egyptian Arabic sounded to the dude, but all of a sudden trays of "grapefruit juice" and "sparkling grape-juice-distillate" start showing up, some with random sparklers in the middle. All, for some reason, for free. Sword of Omens, get me sloshed beyond sloshed!


Drinking of fruit juices (3-4 AM), dancing on bars (?? AM), eating ridiculously rich-and-sweet cheese-honey caloric-juggernaut desserts called knefet jibly with breakfasting laborers in the morning (~6 or 7 AM), minimal sleep (7ish to 8ish AM), hop in de car (9 AM), TOUR-TIME (9:30 AM to I-don't-even-know-anymore PM). In totally achronological order, here are some sights we beheld in Beirut.

Pigeon Rocks. Very pretty, resembling pigeons not-at-all. I'm not sure if I even saw any pigeons in the area.....but then remembered that Egyptians are very fond of stuffed pigeon. Not sure if the Lebanese have that culinary tendency.


Memorial to Rafik Hariri, ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon who was assassinated in a block-encompassing car-bomb blast in 2005. The blown-all-to-hell buildings remain in their damaged state. I'm not sure if this is on purpose to memorialize the site, but the new construction of memorial items in and around the block, coupled with the immaculate new buildings throughout this quarter of the city, make an interesting contrast with the blast area. The memorial area still seems pretty politically charged too, keeping with the theme of, um, all of Lebanese history. Random guy driving by with this wife and kid berated me in broken English while I was photographing the area, but luckily drove off quickly after firing off some angry "no-photos-blurb-blurb-blurb-something"s. A politically-indignant Lebanese guy getting in the way of a hungover Asian taking photographs would not be a pretty sight.