My long-awaited vacation began on July 31 with a late-afternoon flight to Beirut. I've been dreaming of going to Lebanon for awhile, probably in part because it's on the State Department's warning list of countries to avoid and who doesn't like a healthy dose of danger and intrigue while on summer vacation. Perhaps paradoxically given Lebanon's reputation as the stomping ground of kidnapers and gun-brandishing Hezbollah partisans, it actually offered a calm respite from the hectic din of Cairo.
My friend Miriam and I checked into Talal "Hotel" near the Beirut port and in between the trendy Gemmayzeh district and the quiet but sophisticated downtown, which has been rebuilt since the civil war but is still in the process of being revitalized. Our basic room opened out onto a large balcony with a Mediterranean view. Not bad for $20 a night. But within 15 minutes of our arrival, the power had gone out and the motley crew of hostel staff was bumping around with flashlights. It turns out Lebanon's electricity company is protesting something and cuts the power throughout the country for several hours every day. We took the opportunity for an evening stroll down Gouraud St. in Gemmayzeh, filled with candlelit restaurants and hip bars, to Place des Martyrs. This large open area, now mostly a huge parking lot, is where major protests have been held in Lebanon for decades. But this day it was calm, and the cars circling the square stopped politely for pedestrians to cross. (This was a true culture shock after playing pedestrian Russian roulette in Cairo for the past 2 months.) We soon marveled at the fact that there are also recycling bins in Lebanon! What's more, Lebanese women were strutting around in tight shorts and tanktops. It felt incredibly strange to be walking around with bare shoulders all of a sudden. At La Tabkha, the cozy "cantine libanaise" where we had our first dinner of inventive mezze, we were greeted with a "Bonsoir", an aperitif, and balls of lebneh doused with herbs.
The next morning, we decided to explore the downtown, known as Solidere. For security reasons as much as aesthetics, a large cobblestoned area surrounding the Lebanese parliament and radiating from a restored Ottoman clock tower, replete with Rolex face, has been cordoned off for pedestrians. The clean and leafy area looked brand new, like much of Beirut, whose historic buildings have been restored with great care since the end of the war in the early 1990s. Then, occasionally, you stumble across a building pock-marked with bullet holes or black and hollow. Still, it is not hard to forget, in many areas of Beirut, that such a destructive war ravaged the city so recently. Off Nejmeh (or Place de l'Etoile), as the clock tower square is called, we stepped into the Orthodox Church of St. George. An archaeological exhibit in the basement showed us the Hellenistic, Byzantine, medieval, and Ottoman layers of the site, as well as the modern ruin of the church in the 1980s before it was reconstructed. Across the square we visited a mosque, Al-Omari, formerly a Byzantine basilica. The call to prayer that sounded as we wandered seemed oddly out of step with the stiletto heels, Venetian-style apartment buildings, and tinkling glasses of the sidewalk cafes. It was quite easy to forget entirely that it was still Ramadan.
From Nejmeh, Miriam and I embarked on an epic trek to the National Museum, a small but lovely collection of ancient artifacts - mostly Roman statues, a few mosaics, pots, bronze figurines, and glassware. Quite interesting was the short film detailing how the museum's curators saved the artifacts from destruction during the war by encasing them in concrete boxes, burying them, and using all kinds of other inventive tactics. From the museum we proceeded to Hamra, the busy shopping district that feels more like a downtown should. I dined on a bagel with feta and minty lemonade at Cafe Younes, a popular hangout for students at the American University of Beirut and doctors at the AUB Hospital. A walk through the lovely, green AUB campus, mostly built in the late 19th century, led us to the Corniche. Lined with sleek high rise apartment buildings, the Corniche is a place to see and be seen. People were swimming and men bronzing in their Speedos in the afternoon sun. We dined in Hamra at Bread Basket, next to a pair of Syrian engineers who were escaping the conflict across the border. While Beirut itself felt happily peaceful - despite warnings of potential Syrian spillover - this was the first of several encounters that showed how small this bubble of calm really was.
My friend Miriam and I checked into Talal "Hotel" near the Beirut port and in between the trendy Gemmayzeh district and the quiet but sophisticated downtown, which has been rebuilt since the civil war but is still in the process of being revitalized. Our basic room opened out onto a large balcony with a Mediterranean view. Not bad for $20 a night. But within 15 minutes of our arrival, the power had gone out and the motley crew of hostel staff was bumping around with flashlights. It turns out Lebanon's electricity company is protesting something and cuts the power throughout the country for several hours every day. We took the opportunity for an evening stroll down Gouraud St. in Gemmayzeh, filled with candlelit restaurants and hip bars, to Place des Martyrs. This large open area, now mostly a huge parking lot, is where major protests have been held in Lebanon for decades. But this day it was calm, and the cars circling the square stopped politely for pedestrians to cross. (This was a true culture shock after playing pedestrian Russian roulette in Cairo for the past 2 months.) We soon marveled at the fact that there are also recycling bins in Lebanon! What's more, Lebanese women were strutting around in tight shorts and tanktops. It felt incredibly strange to be walking around with bare shoulders all of a sudden. At La Tabkha, the cozy "cantine libanaise" where we had our first dinner of inventive mezze, we were greeted with a "Bonsoir", an aperitif, and balls of lebneh doused with herbs.
The next morning, we decided to explore the downtown, known as Solidere. For security reasons as much as aesthetics, a large cobblestoned area surrounding the Lebanese parliament and radiating from a restored Ottoman clock tower, replete with Rolex face, has been cordoned off for pedestrians. The clean and leafy area looked brand new, like much of Beirut, whose historic buildings have been restored with great care since the end of the war in the early 1990s. Then, occasionally, you stumble across a building pock-marked with bullet holes or black and hollow. Still, it is not hard to forget, in many areas of Beirut, that such a destructive war ravaged the city so recently. Off Nejmeh (or Place de l'Etoile), as the clock tower square is called, we stepped into the Orthodox Church of St. George. An archaeological exhibit in the basement showed us the Hellenistic, Byzantine, medieval, and Ottoman layers of the site, as well as the modern ruin of the church in the 1980s before it was reconstructed. Across the square we visited a mosque, Al-Omari, formerly a Byzantine basilica. The call to prayer that sounded as we wandered seemed oddly out of step with the stiletto heels, Venetian-style apartment buildings, and tinkling glasses of the sidewalk cafes. It was quite easy to forget entirely that it was still Ramadan.
From Nejmeh, Miriam and I embarked on an epic trek to the National Museum, a small but lovely collection of ancient artifacts - mostly Roman statues, a few mosaics, pots, bronze figurines, and glassware. Quite interesting was the short film detailing how the museum's curators saved the artifacts from destruction during the war by encasing them in concrete boxes, burying them, and using all kinds of other inventive tactics. From the museum we proceeded to Hamra, the busy shopping district that feels more like a downtown should. I dined on a bagel with feta and minty lemonade at Cafe Younes, a popular hangout for students at the American University of Beirut and doctors at the AUB Hospital. A walk through the lovely, green AUB campus, mostly built in the late 19th century, led us to the Corniche. Lined with sleek high rise apartment buildings, the Corniche is a place to see and be seen. People were swimming and men bronzing in their Speedos in the afternoon sun. We dined in Hamra at Bread Basket, next to a pair of Syrian engineers who were escaping the conflict across the border. While Beirut itself felt happily peaceful - despite warnings of potential Syrian spillover - this was the first of several encounters that showed how small this bubble of calm really was.
Posters of Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, late spiritual leader of Hezbollah, in a more conservative quarter of Beirut
Nejmeh by night
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