Mzaar Intercontinental Resort Kfardebian

... The soap market! That's what we have to find!" I had been there a couple of times and it was worth the visit all by itself. We happened to be a few feet away from the entrance, which of course, as everything else in the abundance of sight and smells, was invisible unless one was looking straight at it. There you can buy aromatic & therapeutic soap, as well as the decorated soap.

... to Lebanon and did a couple of day trips (using the easy local transport) to Byblos (6000 B.C. uninhabited city) and Jeita Grotto (caves with awesome stalactites and stalagmites). Both were pretty impressive.<br><br>We had to tear ourselves away from Beirut and headed to Baalbek, a small town closer to the Syrian border and home to the best Roman ruins either of us has ever seen. It was a definite O for Awesome.<br><br>With our quick stop in Lebanon over, it was time ...

... the Lebanese are still getting things back in order. But you'll be at a restaurant, in a musuem, or even in your hotel room and the power will just shut off for 2 or 3 hours. Many establishments have generators, atlhough my hotel, unfortunately, doesn't. In any regard, Tripoli is a fascinating city, especially compared to Beirut, which is strikingly modern and undergoing rampant re-development. I definitely would have spent a few days here had it not been for the elections.

... me to the bus station used to be a sales manager for Coke of Saudi Arabia. After he saved up, he returned to Lebanon to get married. At home, civil war was awaiting him. He didn't have time to convert his Lebanese pounds into dollars. As a result, decades' savings evaporated in a few days. Most of the buildings in Tripoli are from the Mamluk era. I walked through the numerous souqs and finally arrived at the Citadel that had first been built by the ...

... ce lundi, passant par la "vallée de la Bekaa", je réalisai tout simplement me trouver au bout du croissant fertile. Cette fraicheur propre au Liban se vit plus généralement auprès de son peuple, très francophile/phone (trop parfois) et dont la gentillesse n'a connu que rares contre-exemples (enculés de chauffeurs de taxis). Un pays assez proche du notre dans sa ...

... l'égard de sa taille aujourd'hui ; nous fûmes à peine 25 touristes visitant le site romain (sympathique chateau, il y a même un petit théâtre et des restes de temple ; l'ensemble n'est tout de même pas transcendant), à peine plus dans les allées du pourtant très joliment restauré souq. Bon. Si Byblos est si jolie c'est surtout grâce à son bord de mer, bien plus joli, propre et ...

... to go out to find a place to smoke hookah, but to no avail - Baalbeck shuts down early. So we bought a few bags of chips and some drinks and walked back to our neighborhood to sit on a bench overlooking some of the ruins (though with the lights out we were sitting in near pitch black darkness.) We sat, passing different types of chips back and forth, not know which one's we liked, and constantly changing our minds about which type we liked ...

... possibility was spending $50 on a taxi which we deemed an unnecessary expenditure. What a painful day...we both felt like death. It took a while to catch lifts and most expected payment, though we flatly refused to fork out a penny. The whole point of hitchhiking is that it's free! Nevertheless, we had spent a lovely 5 days in Bcharre, and the drive up and over the mountain range away from the Maronite Christian stronghold left a beautiful parting image imprinted in our memories.

... so that Anna could experience his educated but wacky slant on life. He turned up at 2pm wearing the same clothes as the night before, looking markedly worse for wear with a huge bit of sticky sleepy dust in one eye and admitted he hadn't yet been to bed. Unfortunately his tiredness revealed an even scattier, more eccentric side to his character and we spent what I can only describe as a difficult and frustrating day with him as he became ...

... a rushed hour later I was in a tiny service taxi station wagon with seven Syrian chain smoking men who didn't speak any English - my idea of heaven........that's a joke btw. Just to be on the safe side I sent Andrew a quick text to tell him where I was and what the situation was but as usual there was nothing to be worried about - they looked after ...