Final Days in Lebanon

Lebanon Final Days

On Day 4 of our tour we opted out of driving through to the Valley of the Saints and the Cedars to take our guide’s invitation to spend the day exploring the area of the skifields of Faraya and Faqra where the remains of a Greek temple, tombs and columns dedicated to Adonis and later Roman ruins stood deep in the snow drifts.

The views were spectacular as we drove through 15 metre snowdrifts, sheer cliffs and bluffs with waterfalls and a natural 38 metre arched stone bridge spanning between two rocky bluffs.

The ski fields were doing brisk business with several thousand people riding the six chair lifts up to the different fields around the township. We rode a lift up to the 2450 metre summit for views over the valleys then headed back down the mountain to sit, snow burnt and relaxed to watch the passing parade of skiers and tourists and drink coffee at the Austria cafe and ski shop.

Walid then drove us into town where we visited his parents in their home nestled amid  huddle of houses amid the maples and remains of snow drifts of Faraya. We were treated to home made cider, coffee, home-baked biscuits and orchard stored apples as we chatted, through Walid, about families and their different lives before heading down through Faqra to Jouneih.

With Walid's family

The next day we headed back to Beirut for three days of self directed tourism - museum visiting, checking out the shops of the rebuilt “Beirut Souq” which is a high end shopping complex created in the central town from the ruins left from the Civil War. We discovered that on a Sunday the locals spend the day strolling the Corniche or dallying over a long lunch at the numerous restaurants that line the St George Marina. With the soft warmth of the Mediterranean washing over us and the sheen of the snow covered Lebanon mountains in the distance made this choice of life style very, very attractive!

 

 

The museum and the area around it bears testament to the ravages of the Civil War which had had its 15km long front line running down the Green Line - now the main road to Damascus. The area is dotted with buildings with their frontages bullet chipped and shell stripped some of which are, apparently, being retained as a reminder of the horrors and futility of war.

The museum has some of the best artifacts from the different civilisations that have passed through Lebanon over the millennia. The displays of sarcophagii, votive offerings and jewelry demonstrated the ways people had adapted and intertwined their beliefs and arts to make their own idiosyncratic culture. The most striking were two sacrophogii made of marble modelled on Egyptian ones but with the faces carved in realistic Hellenic style.
  

We tried to make sense of the Civil War but gave up after wading through several pages of Wikipedia describing the machinations of the different sides along with the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Israelis as they manipulated the factions to suit their different agendas. Instead we marvelled at the way the Lebanese have worked to heal the rifts and damage of the war and rebuild Beirut.

We left Lebanon promising ourselves that we would return as our all too brief a visit had offered us the promise of other places to see and explore.

Lebanon March- April 2012. Day 3

Lebanon - Day 3: Dog River, Harissa and Byblos.

Byblos Souq - Lebanon

Lebanon Day 3

After the impressive ruins of Baalbeck our visit to Dog River, Harissa and Byblos could have been anti-climatic but, like so much of Lebanon, this was yet another great day.

Pigeon Rocks - Beirut

We started the day with a tour of Beirut from the Pigeon Rocks, which are the icons for the city, to the central square- Place d'Etoile and the newly rebuilt area of the city. Here we visited the Greek Orthodox church of St George, the Maronite Church with its tall bell tower standing beside the new Mohammed Al-Amin mosque. All of the churches are close to the "Green Line" that marked the killing zone and boundary between the warring Christian and Muslim factions during the civil war (1975-96) which leads down past the tomb of the assissinated prime minister, Rafiq Hariri,  to the Martyrs' Square and the much shot up statue of the Lebanese martyrs executed there by the Turks in 1916.

The Martyrs' statue

The Dog River, Nahr el Kalb, has been a natural barrier to the different invaders entering the country. The Egyptians, in the 14th century, had declared the river to be the boundary between the Egyptian empire and the Hittites while, in later centuries, the river gorge was the point where different conquerers left their marks, carving monuments and stele along the gorge to commemorate their presence and victories. There are markers left by Rameses II, Nebuchadnezzar, Marcus Aurelius and modern French, Australian and British forces in the 20th century.

Stele marking the Roman invasion

Roman Bridge on Dog River

A narrow Roman bridge a little way up the gorge is the reminder of the only way invaders had managed to cross the river and continue their invasions.

The Lady of Lebanon

Across the river the city of Jouneih marks the point to visit Harissa and the statue of the Lady of Lebanon and the Maronite cathedral of Lebanon which towers over the city. We opted not to ride the cable car up the 650 metre hillside and drove up the hill to the summit. After enjoying the view over the bay we headed off to explore Byblos.


Byblos was once a Crusader harbour and is now a quiet fishing harbour. Historically the city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Apparently it has been inhabited for over 7 millenia and has been the centre for pottery and trade since Phoenecian times and gave the world the alphabetic script we use, in varying forms, even now.


Like Baalbeck, Byblos has seen its far share of invaders - Greek, Roman, Byzantine, arab, Crusaders and Ottoman - and is dominated by the Crusader Castle built in the 12th century using stones stripped from the earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings that dot the site.


Around the castle the ruins of a Roman theatre, Phoenecian tombs and the remains of neolithic and chalcolithic housing provide ample grounds for speculation about the history of the area.

The Byblos souq is yet another place which would reward the avid bargain hunter with its numerous shops including the interesting Memoire du Temps which specialises in fossils of ancient fish preserved in the limestone of the local hillsides.

Temple to Jupiter - Byblos

We lunched at a local sea food restaurant, Ode Mer, where we enjoyed a magnificent meal that left us feeling full and extremely well satisfied before spending the rest of the afternoon exploring the old town of Jouneih.

Lebanon March-April 2012 Day 2

Lebanon Day 2 - Beiteddene, Beeka Valley and Baalbeck

Today we headed off to the Beeka Valley to explore the temples of Baalbeck. We were picked up at 9.00 and headed off across the Mt Lebanon range through Beiteddin where the Presidential Summer Palace sits high on the hillside just outside the township of Deir Al Qamar.

Deir Al Qamar

The township is dominated by a large central square, the Midan, which was once the jousting area during the 15th century - now it is the Dany Chamoun Square in memory of a local politician who was assassinated in 1990.

The town justified a longer time for exploration and wandering but constant drizzle, a cold wind and the promise of a long day of driving and sight seeing meant our visit was all too brief.

Just outside the town bus loads of children were being off loaded at “Castle Moussa” - a fantasy concoction that is a glorious mixture of one man’s idea of medieval castles, fairy tales, adventure stories and generous addition of Walt Disney perched on the hillside - we ignored the possibility of joining them and headed off to the Beiteddine Palace.

Courtyard Beiteddine Palace

Beiteddine was built between 1788 and 1810 on the crest of the mountainside. It is a mix of Italian and Arab architecture that combine to make a beautiful building - especially with the ornate carved and inlaid ceilings and walls that dominate the main rooms - we were the only tourists in the sprawling building which meant we could wander easily through the rooms and grounds.

From here we headed over Mt Lebanon down towards the Beeka Valley and Baalbeck.

The drizzle stopped as we drove into the vast plain that is the Beeka Valley. The valley is the centre of Lebanon’s wine industry which made a visit to the Ksara Winery obligatory. Like the Mission Vineyard in Hawkes Bay the Ksara winery was established by Jesuits in the mid 19th century. Unlike Mission, Ksara was reviving a centuries old tradition of making wine in the region as wine had been produced in the valley for over 5000 years. Ksara is one of the biggest producers of wine and boasts a 2 km underground wine cellar originally built by the Romans.

Part of a 2 km underground wine cellar

After an all too short tour, visit and sampling of some very pleasant red wines we headed off to Baalbeck and its complex of temples.

The main gateway to the Temple of Jupiter

Entering the Grand Courtyard

Baalbeck is one of the biggest Roman archeological sites we’ve been to in all our travels but then the hills there have been the site of the worship of various gods since Phoenician times when it was the temple to the sun god - Baal. The Greeks then took the temple over and rededicated it to Helios (along with renaming the town Heliopolis). The Romans then turned it into a complex of temples dedicated to Jupiter, Venus and Baachus. Later the Byzantines converted the temple into a church then the Arabs made it into a fortified citadel.

 
All through the construction and reconstruction the 22 metre high columns that framed the temple of Jupiter stood on their 1000 ton foundation stones, cut from the local quarry, to declare the might of Rome.

Beside the Jupiter complex a large, perfectly preserved temple, bigger than the Parthenon on Athens, to Bacchus stands thanks to the centuries build up of silt that had protected the building from the predations of different rebuilders. Graffiti dated 1880-85 two thirds of the way up the massive columns testifies how deep the silt build up was before the archeologists began the herculean task of digging the temple out.

grafitti 2/3rds way up a massive column in the Temple to Bacchus

After a great lunch at a restaurant run by a local farming enterprise we headed back to Beirut to prepare for our next day of touring.

Lebanon Holiday March 2012 Day 1

LEBANON - MARCH-APRIL 2012:  Day 1

Pigeon Rocks - the symbol of Beirut

Washing on the porch - Apartment on side street Beirut

March-April 2012
Lebanon Day 1

After hearing great reports from friends who had been to Beirut Joy and I decided that a trip to Lebanon was an ideal for the end of trimester 2. We used the agency, Atlas Tours, we'd used when we went to Jordan.

We arranged a tour taking us around Lebanon for six days from Beirut through Sidon and Trye, to Baalbeck and the Ksara caves , the Dog River, Harrissa and Bylbos and then on to the Qadisha Grotto  and Faraya finishing off with three days to explore Beirut by ourselves.

Lebanon certainly lived up to the reports we' d had from our friends in Abu Dhabi, with its long and eventful history of continuous human settlement and its geography that allowed us to experience all weathers from sun, to drizzle, to thunderstorms and snow all in one day!

The ruins of The Hilton Hotel in Beirut.
Burnt out and bombed during the Civil War.

Our hotel in Beirut, The Charles, was basic but centrally placed near the corniche and within easy walking distance to the town centre. It was also very close to the Hilton Hotel which exists now as an empty bullet and missile pocked ruin over looking what was once the Green line killing zone during the Civil War and Israeli invasion that ran from 1975 through to 1989. From what I could see from the hotel window the empty Hotel across the road had also been a target for snipers from the Hilton as there were a series of bullet holes stitching their way up the face of the building.

A reminder of the Civil War (1975-96)

We took the opportunity to wander along the Corniche in the evening to watch the passing parade of those with a mania for fitness, those whose purpose in life is to be seen walking an expensive dog, the couples in earnest contemplation of each others eyes and the weather beaten fishermen and mahjong players enjoying the evening light.

Our driver-guide, Waleed, picked us up early in the morning to begin our tours of the country. This took us to the south of the country ... To the ancient Phoenician port cities of Sidon and Trye. These cities are a treasure trove of the history of invasions and rebuilding that characterizes the country. The crusader sea castle built in 1228 on top of a Phoenician temple with building blocks scavenged from the Roman ruins that dot the town dominates the harbour and provides a link to the old town with its souqs and remains of Ottoman caveransi and trading points.

Souq- Sidon

In the souq The Khan al-Saboun  a  building which has been in constant use since the 13th century but since the 17th century has been a soap factory. Introduced us to the tradition of soap making. Here, the different materials to make the natural soap were bought together and processed in a giant vat until everything had fused together and could be poured out and smoothed into smoothness and made ready for cutting into hard blocks of soap.

Sidon Souq butcher shop

Bread making in the street Souq Sidon

From the factory we wandered through the Souq, watching the bakers pounding dough and baking batch after batch of Lebanese breads, the wrinkled and bearded old carpenters assembling stools and tables or turning piles of wooden spoons and the women haggling over the price of large, incredibly red and sweet strawberries or lush vegetables with the stall holders, until we emerged on the fore shore and the Khan Al-Franj or caravansi which was the centre of trade and hospitality from 1610 until the mid 19th century.

From Sidon we headed for Tyre, a city originally built on an island by the Phoenicians in the 3rd millennium BC and which withstood numerous sieges until 323 BC  Alexander the Great built a causeway from the mainland to wheel his siege engines across to smash the walls and, after killing the inhabitants, rebuild it to suit his purposes. After Alexander the city was taken by successive waves of invaders who all added their buildings and cultures.
Now the excavations have revealed the ruins of  Roman Tyre with its market and huge bath complex.

Victory arch marking beginning of Roman Necropolis Tyre

Byzantine Necropolis - Tyre

Outside the city a sprawling necropolis filled with sarcophagi from the Byzantines through to the Romans leads to the largest Roman Hippodrome in the world. It, apparently, could seat 40,000 keen supporters of the Blue and Green teams who, judging by the carvings on the doorways, raced their chariots around the tight hairpin turns of the track.

Already the archeology of Lebanon was proving to be more than we had seen in our travels around the Mediterranean and Middle East. But the most impressive was to come when we headed into the Beeka Valley and on to Baalbeck.