Beirut Day 32 – July 25, 2009

We woke up early to head to Baalbek and got on the bus for the long ride. We stopped at a restaurant in a region famous for its labneh (strained yogurt) and I ordered what was essentially a Panini with halloumi cheese. During the whole ride the woman who was apparently our tour guide kept standing up and saying things as we passed different areas. Unfortunately her microphone was horrible and I couldn’t hear anything she was saying. The Bekaa Valley, which we drove through, was beautiful but the poverty there was also fairly evident. We did a drive-by of the “largest stone in the world” by which I presume they mean largest carved stone. It is also called the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, for some reason I’m not sure of.

We proceeded to Baalbek, which is one of the best preserved Roman ruins in the country. It used to be called Heliopolis and has the remains of a temple of Jupiter and the fairly well preserved ruins of a temple to Bacchus. But right outside Baalbek was the Hezbollah ‘museum’. It was disconcerting to say the least, probably due to the dioramas of missiles and grenade launchers and “blood spattered” helmets. They also had t-shirts and flags for sale, in which some of my classmates indulged.

After that happy note we proceeded into the actual ruins. They were quite amazing and well preserved, as promised. Of course there were no signs saying keep off the ruins, so of course no one did, myself included. A bunch of us managed to climb this staircase and tower in the middle of the main section before the teachers noticed and freaked out about liability. That was also the point that my camera died despite my having changed the batteries that very morning.

The tour guide continued to be pushy and annoyed that only four students were following her Arabic tour, which was in a difficult mix of amiya and MSA. She caught me nodding and then assumed I understood everything she said, which I definitely did not.

After the ruins we drove to Zahle where we had lunch at Casino Arabi. In typical Lebanese and Arab fashion, lunch took twice as long as the time spent at the ruins. The food was ok, but there wasn’t much I felt like eating. I did really enjoy eating the grapes though and it makes me want to find some more. After Zahle the buses returned to AUB. I somehow managed to stay awake until my parental Skype appointment at midnight and in the meantime did a little work on my research paper.