faqra

In retrospect, we probably should have gone to the Cedars as much of the snow is already melting in Faraya. It’s sort of amazing that apart from the traffic getting out of Beirut, you can actually arrive in a ski resort in less than 40 minutes. We had a nice lunch sitting outside in the sunshine. Spring has definitely come to Mount Lebanon.

There was still a fair bit of snow, but it wasn’t fresh and we weren’t too inspired to play in it. We headed to the ruins near Faqra (a private ski resort). These ruins are Roman according to the internet but Greek according to our Lonely Planet. As is generally the case in Lebanon, you could climb all over the columns. There were also a lot of fantastic rock formations, and it was all very stunning in the (patchy) snow. We climbed on the rocks and then I caught a tiny and brilliant green frog. Spring, definitely Spring.

nathan's temple
This is the smaller temple at this site. It’s dedicated to Atargatis, a Syrian goddess. Later it was used to worship Astarte.

bury the hair
Confidential to NAC: Look closely at this photo.

We briefly stopped in at one of the ski slopes, but found the pulsing techno at the bottom to be irritating. We ended up driving back down the mountain and then north to Batroun, a town that none of us had spent much time in. We wandered in the old town, with its renovated stone Ottoman houses. We drank some sugary lemonade and walked down to the old Phoenician sea wall. As we rocked along the rocks, we noticed swarms of these weird pillbugs that could also run in and out of tide pools. There were thousands of them.

The sun was setting, so we headed to a cafe and had coffee or beer, nuts, and carrots. One of my favorite things here is that if you order a beer or wine, you are also presented with nuts of different kinds and sometimes carrots. The carrots are salted and marinated in lemon juice. In this way, you can pretend that drinking a beer is somehow healthy– a little protein, a little Vitamin A.

We had an uneventful drive back to Beirut, if you can ever call driving here uneventful. Drivers here insist on turning 3 lanes into 7, which often slows things to a halt. In the States, highway driving can put you to sleep, here it is like a precarious dance.

We dropped the car off downtown, and then proceeded to walk through the completely shut area. All of Solidere has been secured for the meetings going on in the Parliament building. This means that every business, every cafe is closed and will be for a total of 7-10 days. It was like a ghost town, with soldiers everywhere. A gaggle of apologetic ones searched our bags as we passed down one street. Just kids, like everywhere. We had to walk a fair distance in order to find a service, there were no cars or people anywhere. So strange to have the “heart of Beirut” utterly silent on a Saturday night.

UPDATE: Ethan pointed out that is is weird that I wrote this whole long post and didn’t even mention that we went with friends. That was partly inadvertent, but I am always reluctant to say much online about people who don’t know they are being written about. Anyhow.. these new friends are really great, a German couple who are fun to be around. It was a real pleasure to spend all day with them.