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A Love Affair with Lebanon Part 2: Beirut
We woke up for breakfast again the following day and packed our bags ready for our trip to Beirut. We still weren’t sure how were were going to get there, as in whether we were going to take a bus, taxi or service, but it was with excitement that we paid our bill at Hotel Koura for our rooms ($60 each for 3 nights including breakfast - bargain!) and headed down the stairs towards the central area where we knew we would be able to find something to take us away.
We found a bus company quite quick which was quite cheap: only 3,500 lira (around 1GBP) all the way to Beirut. Not bad! I spent most of the bus journey playing on my iPhone and occasionally looking out of the window while the man next to me spent it staring at me… As soon as we got into Beirut we arrived at the central bus station and asked the nearest taxi driver where to find hotel Pension Al-Nahzi, which turned out to be just round the corner. Convenient. We hadn’t booked anything so we weren’t sure if there were any rooms available but luckily four beds in the dormitory on the first floor had become available, with the other one being taken up by some Italian guy.
As we’d arrived early afternoon we decided to explore before we found somewhere to get lunch. It turned out we were actually smack bang in the middle of the city and were less than 5 minutes walk from the amazing Mohammed al-Amin mosque in the centre. We walked towards that and were entranced by the huge Virgin Megastore next door to it which we eventually succumbed to. It was a vast building with 4 different floors: Books, DVDs, electronics and toys. We spent a while looking round the books before we headed up to the DVDs, which were pointless for us as we could quite easily buy fake ones on the street in Syria for about a twentieth of the price. We then headed to the ground store to the electronics section and there I found my weakness: a PS3 with Fifa 11 on it… Christmas had definitely come early for me.
A few matches later I was dragged away from the TV screen and we popped into the Mohammed al-Amin mosque. From afar it look amazing: beautifully clean sand coloured walls with blue domes on top with a backdrop of a beautiful city. The inside is just as stunning with gigantic chandeliers and lavishly decorated ceilings coupled with a beautiful carpet. Of course a lot of pictures were taken and, although we were alone when we got there, a lot of tourists turned up when we were inside and filled the place with noise and camera flashes.
Afterwards we went and grabbed a quick late mezze lunch at the Al-Balad restaurant in the Place d’Etoile, which had a really nice spicy hummus dip and salads. It also had WiFi which was a godsend as Lebanon doesn’t have restrictions on Facebook or iPhone applications so I could update everything on my phone and buy a few more extra games to replace the ones I had already completed!
We then looked around a bit and found a nice Costa and a Starbucks to grab a few drinks from. We then started to walk towards the American University of Beirut near the harbour, however we did notice how there was a ridiculous amount of soldiers around which we were somewhat unnerved about, however we continued until we got to a tall, vacant building with large holes in it: The Holiday Inn. This was hollowed out during a battle that took place in 1975 where, uncompleted, it had become a favourite place for snipers during the civil war, so whenever anyone was shot by a sniper they would blast the building with a few rounds of whatever was around to shoot it. It never fell down as it was built to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters, so today it stands as a reminder of the price of war and of Beirut’s past.
After seeing this and realising it was probably going to be hard getting around with all the soldiers on the street we headed back towards our hotel, stopping off briefly in Costa and then in Virgin Megastores (for another game of Fifa…)
Basically I did write a lot more after this but for some reason the servers on the Tumblr website decided to overload. So a quick summary: back to the hotel, out for cheap dinner at Mi Chaud, really amazing shisha pipe (http://img2.photographersdirect.com/img/24553/wm/pd1900493.jpg) which tasted amazing, bed time. Paul’s (French bakery chain) for breakfast where we bought lunch, then National Museum which was okay thought I got bored easily, then Paul’s sandwiches on steps outside, then attempted to find a museum that didn’t exist anymore for some reason, followed by walk along the sea front, back to the hotel, eating Kung Po Chicken for dinner at a nice Chinese place followed by ice cream, then back to the hotel for bed. We woke up and went to Paul’s again for breakfast then caught a taxi back home after a long but fun trip.
