Beirut Day 4-June 27

Saturday morning I heard via the AUB CAMES Facebook group that there was an English walking tour of the city (the only one in fact) run by AUB students. I went to Medical Gate to meet the tour but thought I had missed it. It seems there actually was no tour that day, perhaps because of AUB graduation later that night. After seeing how fantastic the Lonely Planet guidebook my roommate has was, I decided to get my own. She told me the name of the bookstore and I decided to head out to it. There is a dearth of website for businesses here or one is generally unable to find them on google maps but Librairie Antoine is well established enough that you can find them on the internet. I knew it was within walking distance and I figured out how to get there. Unfortunately I turned too early down the wrong street and ended up making this large loop. Many streets are not well labeled, if at all, at intersections and the labels, when they do exist, will be small and on the side of one building. In addition to this both streets will be labeled in the same place so you have to know that the one on top is the street that you’re on and the bottom one is the cross street. I did eventually get to the bookstore and get the guidebook. I also managed discipline and did not even look at the plethora of delicious delicious books.

That evening I got dinner with another CAMES student, Rob. We wandered around for a while fruitlessly searching for falafel before stopping and getting sage (saj). Then we walked back on campus to sit, eat and talk for a while. We were actually seated somewhat near AUB graduation so we could occasionally here speeches, applause and ululations. There was also a small kitten that kept circling us trying to get food. It did not like my olives and I can’t blame him because neither did I. It did however like Rob’s lahme (meat). We also heard fireworks and gunshots of a celebratory nature because Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated Rafik Hariri had just been confirmed as PM.