Lots to do in Lebanon

There is a lot to see in Lebanon. Like almost too much, really. Particularly if you only have a couple of days to see and do it all. But as they say, the struggle is real and sleep is for suckers.

In order to cover as much as possible, I decided to sign up for two day trips, both which started much too early in the morning.

Day one, I headed north. As with all things in life, the tours would be a mixed bag. There would be would be some really great stops and then there were would be some that were just "eh". After reading the description, I mentally placed the first stop firmly in the 'eh' category. It would be a stop at the Jeita grotto. I have nothing against grottos, per se, it is just that I have been to so many that after a while all those stalactites and stalagmites start to blend together. That is probably why after taking a cable car up to the upper grotto, I was completely ok with their rule that you put all phones, cameras, etc into a locker. Less to carry, I thought. And then I walked inside. Holy fuck, it was beautiful. I wanted my camera back!!. If I would have had it on me, there is no possible way that I could have stuck to their no photos rule so I get why they had us stow everything.  However, I have no clue why they are being such sticklers about it. To the best of my knowledge, flash photography has never brought down a stalactite. What gives, Jeita grotto?

On the way out, we were able to retrieve our phones before boarding a little train that would take us to the lower grotto, where they expected us to go through the locker routine again. Fool me once and all that, I was keeping my phone.  Only I guess the same experience that tells them we can not be trusted with photographic equipment must also inform them that they have a more motivated crowd for grotto #2.  They were on it!!  If anyone has managed to sneak in a camera for the lower grotto, my hat's off to them. Those grotto people did not miss a thing.  I tried to get past the gate and they sent me right back to the locker. So if you want to see the grotto, go here or here or here.

Stop #2 was Byblos. Inhabited since 5000 BCE, it is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.

In that span of time, Byblos has seen plenty of invaders come and go, many of whom have left their mark on the focus of our tour, the Crusader castle.

Within the archeological park, our guide pointed out Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Greek and Roman ruins but I'm not confident enough in my memory to commit to any of the details so I will leave it at that.

Once we were done with the park, we were given some free time to explore the city itself, which was an artsy little gem. Why couldn't I have more time to stay in a quaint airbnb run by a motherly Lebanese woman who would bring me fresh hummus for breakfast?

I'll tell you why, because we had to continue on to Harissa, the home of the big-ass Virgin. Standing at nearly 28 feet tall and weighing 15 tons, Our Lady of Lebanon is hard to miss. Our second cable car of the day took us up to her perch overlooking the Bay of Jounieh.

Lebanon has a sizeable Christian population so it is not surprising that there would be a Mary statue, even one this massive, but what I didn't expect was the number of Muslims present. It's not like they were just there for the great view. They were lighting candles and praying. I later learned it's because Seidatna Maryam, or Our Lady Mary, gets an entire chapter in the Quran.

I managed to run directly from this tour, which had made for a pretty full day all on its own, straight onto a walking tour of Beirut. Did I mention that there is a lot to do in Lebanon?

There was no slowing down on day two. My next tour would take me eastward towards the myriad of ruins in the Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border.

We kicked it off with a stop in Anjar, an Umayyad city founded in 705 ADE.

Our guide gave us a wonderfully detailed explanation about the site and its significance, which I will surely bungle if I try to repeat so I handing this over to the UNESCO site:

The site of this ancient city was only discovered by archaeologists at the end of the 1940s.  Excavations revealed a fortified city surrounded by walls and flanked by forty towers, a rectangular area (385 x 350 m). Dominated by gates flanked by porticos, an important North-South axis and a lesser East-West axis, superposed above the main collectors for sewers, divide the city into four equal quadrants.  Public and private buildings are laid out according to a strict plan: the great palace of the Caliph and the Mosque in the South-East quarter occupies the highest part of the site, while the small palaces (harems) and the baths are located in the North-East quarter to facilitate the functioning and evacuation of waste waters. Secondary functions and living quarters are distributed in the North-West and South-West quarters. The ruins are dominated by spectacular vestiges of a monumental tetrapyle, as well as by the walls and colonnades of the Umayyad palace, three levels of which have been preserved. These structures incorporate decorative or architectonical elements of the Roman era, but are also noteworthy for the exceptional plasticity of the contemporary decor within the construction.

The Grand Palace

The creation of this city is credited to the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid, who was a very persuasive fellow. For example, he told his builders that if his palace was not completed in time, he would have them all killed. Lo and behold, they managed to make the deadline. Since the time crunch was real, they did not have time to hew and cut all their own stones, instead recycling pieces from other cities, including some with Greek lettering.

This also explains why the tops and bottoms of the columns don't always match, as they were taken from different places.

Being as close as we were to Syria, we saw a number of refugee camps along the road. There are Syrians who have documentation that allow them to go back and forth across the border but most are sadly stuck in these makeshift camps for the foreseeable future.

Question: Have you ever enjoyed a bag lunch sitting alongside one of the largest stones ever quarried? No? I have. It sits near our next destination, the ancient Phoenician city of Baalbek and is watched over by a delightful guy who has set up his small souvenir store on the premises and is known as the protector of the rock.

The 1,240 ton behemoth was most likely intended for the Temple of Jupiter nearby but getting it from this from here to there proved to be a bit of a problem. Now it just sits here impregnating women. Maybe. Nicknamed "the Stone of the Pregnant Woman", the legend is that if you touch it, the world's most phallic monolith, you will get knocked up. I'm not all that superstitious but I grabbed my hummus sandwich and sat as far from this cursed rock as I could, just to be on the safe side.

It's sad that the prego pillar never did get to make the journey to the site once known as Heliopolis because, even now centuries later, it is pretty frigging amazing. Considered by archeologists to be the most intact Roman ruin in all of the world, it is an astounding place to visit.

Before even entering the archeological park, you come across the Temple of Venus. Anywhere else, it would be the star of the show but here, it is nothing but a bit player, a freebie for those that don't want to pay the price of admission.

Once inside, you come face to insanely large face with the Temple of Jupiter.

Just look how teeny tiny the people standing next to the columns are.

It is difficult to overstate the massive scale. Work on this temple dedicated to Zeus (the Roman equivalent to the Greek Jupiter) was begun by Julius Caesar and later continued by Emperor Augustus and was the largest Zeus/ Jupiter temple in all of the classical world.

It remains a mystery to scientists and archeologists alike how or why ancient man managed to work with the three thousand ton blocks that support this temple.

Earthquakes, looters, time and Emperor Justinian swiping eight of the columns for use in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia have done a number on Jupiter's temple.

Faring much better is one dedicated to every oenophile's favorite god, the lovely Temple of Bacchus. Today, it is considered one of the best preserved Roman temple ruins in the world.

You know those moments when you think "Wow, I can't believe I'm actually here seeing this for myself"? That's how I felt walking around the ruins of Baalbek with maybe a half dozen other visitors in the entire park. These are better Roman ruins than even Rome has and yet up until I began researching this trip, I had never even heard of them.

I had a similar "Oh wow" thought on our drive home, but for totally different reasons. That was when our driver turned off of the main road into a residential neighborhood. We were in an area controlled by Hezbollah which might explain why, despite there being police cars on the very road we turned off on,  there were fields full of hash prominently on display. Apparently, this is a big source of income for Hezbollah and is thus tolerated by the local authorities. Taking it a step further, there is currently talk of legalizing it with the Economic minister bragging about the outstanding quality of Lebanese weed.

There was one girl on the tour begging to be let out of the van to partake. Our guide shut her down, not necessarily because there was any danger in walking up to a stranger's home asking to buy weed, but because we were running late. You see, we were in Lebanon and there was still a lot to do. 

In my case, I was meeting a local friend to go to a shisha bar where I would dance to Pitbull tunes set to an arabic beat until the wee hours when it was time for me to board my flight home. If you ask me about that flight, I have no answers, although I vaguely remember connecting through Athens. I was wiped out from three adventure-packed days trying to take in all that beautiful Lebanon had to offer. Because did I mention that it was a lot???