Le Royal Beirut

... mostly organic food, you even can eat raw meat).

Beirut is amazing, so many different people, open-minded, new houses beside ruins, the biggest and most expensive cars I´ve ever seen (Mercedes SLR and so on)...such a progress...walk along the corniche....

Back to Frankfurt we flew business, was quite comfortable....

... night. We went to a place called Beity for dinner. It was recommended by the two Muslim girls we met a few days ago. I can't say it was the best place I've been to, but it it was nice and have ok food. Me and Ahmed had Steak while Chuck ate Kafta. After dinner we drove downtown and got some coffee at a place in the walking only area. After chilling for a bit we went to some club that I don't know the name of, it was pretty lame so we had a drink and then left to ...

... checkpoints s'étant intégré presque harmonieusement (comme les grues et bulldozers) au reste. Un climat assez étrange du coup, renforcé par l'interdiction assez généralisée de prendre des photos de la ville. J'ai fait un très large tour de la ville hier avant de la traverser largement ce matin ; j'en ai vu les principaux ...

... bus stood up so they could hear my conversation with the driver better and they eventually offered to help me. They were all super nice. They said they would let me know where I needed to get off. Thirty minutes later, I was given the signal to get off the bus. I was on the side of a busy road and I didn't see any beach around. So I asked two military guys where I could find the "Bain Militaire" as this is where I needed to go. They said I ...

... caves, and then make our way back to Amman. So we started driving in the direction where we knew it was. On the way we saw a cable car setup that went to the top of the mountain. At that point I remembered my friend telling me that she had taken a cable car up to see Bait Mary....so that was the real bait mary that we had wanted to go to all along yesterday! We were both excited and ready to go but I wanted to see Je'itta Grotto since ...

... was the immense size of the stones. How did they ever get those things stacked on top of each other? After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity a Basilica was built on the court yard of the temple. The Mamluks from Egypt came next and used some of the stones to build a fortress here. The Crusaders were never able to capture it. The informational plaques around the site explained what we were looking at and most of our descriptions come from what we learned from them.

As a seasoned traveled, I am embarassed to share with you the story of my arrival in Beirut and my excellent travel pre-planning. I guess in the midst of all the excitement of starting the independent travel part of my journey, I simply forgot that i actually had to organize things on my own!! I've convinced myself that this minor forgetfulness is a normal symptom after "back-to-back ...

My journal entry for this day was really abbreviated but I'll fill in as best I can! We started out the day going back to school with Dave for Dare2Ask, where Maher (with YFC) comes to the school to lead a discussion with the older high school students for about 20 minutes. Then we went to recess again to hang out with the kids. Lunch was at Khaymet al Saniour with Maher for lots of food. Delicious and long as always. I love meals here! Picked up ...

... Muslim inhabitants who used the site as a defensive fortress. The largest of the three temples at Baalbek is the temple of Jupiter which boasts the largest Roman columns ever erected. Four of these massive pillars are still standing, but there is evidence that when the temple was in use, 50 others of equal size supported the structure's massive roof. We stood for several minutes to marvel at the sheer size of structure and were even more shocked to learn that in Roman times ...

... or smoking a nargileh - a water pipe. the last few mondays have seen big demonstrations in the city centre, and they have turned into something of a weekly event, so a few of us decided it would be worth going along to watch. the one the previous week attracted several hundred thousand people, but it was the last big such protest before the elections which will take place next month. there were maybe as few as several hundred in the city centre ...