Don't hate me because these pictures are beautiful. Hate me because they take a while to load since I haven't resized them. This stuff's just temporary, so don't hate me too much.
My trip to Lebanon was an absolute blast. Let me start off by saying this: Lebanon is not a desert.
It was a lot of fun though. We started our trip in the village of Alma, where my dad's from. The building's were a bit raw, they were just rubble filled walls with nice brick on the outside. The view, however, was spectacular. This is our backyard.
From there, we went to Al At'shief, a castle from the crusades. It's also called Beauford Castle. It's a pity that war broke out, because a castle that looks so majestic from afar is turning to this. And it's surrounded by rubble. The views here, too, as in much of lebanon, were out of this world.
Somewhere on the trip, we met Abou Fadel.
It's been a while, but the palace of Beit'Eddinecame next. Beit'Eddine used to be the sultan's palace, and is currently the summer home of the president of Lebanon. I can see why he'd want to live there. Look at some of the architecture, like this hall, and this courtyard. Another view of that courtyard is here. That little black window was the Sultan's sitting room where he surveyed what was going on. You'll see those in a few more shots, like this one in the gardens. This door is simply gorgeous. Only the sultan could use the larger door. Everyone else had to use the midget door so they'd be bowed down when entering to see the Sultan. This tree must have been important, I took a few pictures of it. I swear, I couldn't read the arabic! But my typical american ignorance allowed me to get this gorgeous shot off the wall I climbed.
Oh, right, I didn't mention this earlier, but I think it was on the way to Al At'shief that our car went off the road. It was the ice, I swear it was.
The ancient roman temple complex at Ba'albek turned me into a fucking shutterbug. The ruins there are of a temple of Jupiter, a temple of Bacchus, and a temple of Venus, which, unfortunately was too ruined to really see. This area, too, has been struck by war. During the crusades, it was occupied by muslims, who built battlements to fight from, and unfortunately, emptied all these niches of the statues that should have been there. The temple of Jupiter was the biggest, by far. Look at all the pillars. More shots of them are here,here, and here. Impressive, yea? Even moreso when you realize how big those pillars are. This is a pillar on its side, with my brother Dave next to it. For those of you who don't know him, he's about my height. For those of you who don't know me, I'm between 5'10 and 6' tall. Go figure.
It's been a while since I've added anything, and, well, now it's going to lose any sense of continuity. I still have Baal'bek pictures to put up, like thissacrificial pool, or the details on it, at least. Another view of the pool is here. Kind of crazy that all of this is held together by bronze fittings that went into those niches, in each and every single block. It's also kind of crazy how detailed EVERYTHING was. Even the ceilings. Here is a ceiling still up. Parts of it have fallen. In addition, this place has been used for many different official functions. This altar is where the treaty releasing Lebanon from the Ottoman Empire was signed. These are the plaques commemorating that peace.
I think that about covers Baal'bek. The next big place was Byblos. Byblos is a historic town, mentioned in the Bible even, from what our guides were saying. We went to the market, which with its wooden doors and tiny shops was actually a lot more fun than I thought. My friend bought a belly dancing outfit there. It was a huge trading area, and walking along one of the old piers, I managed to get some fantastic shots of the ocean:this,this, this, and this. Also, wandering through the castle and surrounding grounds(As might have been seen by a defending archer through this arrow slit). These are the ramparts of the castle, as seen from the ground. Not only did the grounds have this sweet ampitheatre, but they're also home to THE premiere site of Phoenecian artifacts and history: The temple of obelisks. It's not much to do with anything, but this well was pretty deep, and dated to around 3200BC. I went wading around here looking for coins, but also because it was gorgeous. Gratuitous shot.
Next up is Sur, better known as Tyre. Not much remains of the biblical city, but there's one temple complex, in the middle of the city. But stretching to the ocean. There was also a Roman forum here. Last but not least of my Sur pictures that came out decent is this poor tomb. Oh. It has nothing to do with anything, but the householder on the edge of the property was mighty proud of this cannon.
Dar'el'Amar was another stop. It used to be the capital of Lebanon while it was an Ottoman province. It's a little town in the mountains. Still, though, it had an amazing palace, which for some reason I didn't scan any pictures of. But these are the stairs that I had to climb to get on top of the palace to take that awesome picture of the town. Talk about scary. No hand rails, and the stairs are all different heights, one might be 4" and the next 10". Fun stuff, that. Here's another view off the palace. Also in Dar'el'Amar was the famous silk market. This is a dog sleeping under a car.
That about covers the pictures I have scanned really. Here's just a few random ones:
This is the view from a restaurant we ate at. That's our table in the bottom of the picture. They also had a pretty cool looking point you could picnic on.
A magic lemon tree that they had to tie to some PVC at our neighbor's place, because the weight of the lemon pulled the thing down.
The big brand of fridge in Lebanon is Concorde. Also known as the ninja fridge. Here I attempted to capture one of the ads on film, but it moved too fast for my Grasshoppa like reflexes.
There's even snow in Lebanon, in the summer. I know I was impressed.
Here is a random villa. I think the picture's from Dar'el'Amar, or maybe Beit'Eddine
