So Thursday, after school and work, we all met by the main gate of the university to catch the service taxi to the airport. By "we all" I mean Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and me. There were about ten others who went to Beirut last weekend, and we definitely ended up meeting to go out together, but the four of us traveled together and shared the hotel room.
Anyhow, we headed to the airport and caught our flight to Beirut; extremely uneventful, only about a 45-minute flight. Immigration was no problem, fun to have another Middle-Eastern stamp in my passport... Caught the taxi sent by the hotel and rode through the city. It's a raaaahther nice place, cleaner than Amman for the most part, a little more put-together. Not as much Arabic on the signage, probably because of the greater amounts of tourism, and the French language from their influence in the past. It was fun to speak French during the weekend :)
The hotel was nice; though we've come to figure out that the Arab version of a double bed is more like a twin and a half, so we had to get cozy to squeeze four of us into a room! After a wash-up, we headed out to meet the other Americans, most of whom had taken a morning flight (and skipped class!!) and had been exploring the city all day. We met them on Jummeizah Street, which was described to us as the Bourbon Street of Beirut. Not quite as hoppin', but we definitely explored the bars and restaurants up and down the street. It was also a nice vacation from the dress code of Jordan: perhaps because of its more European air, we could wear pretty much anything we wanted, and in most cases we still looked more conservative than some of the locals we encountered!!
The next day was rainy and gross, but of course we ventured out anyway! First stop was to the American University of Beirut, so we could do a little comparison of the universities. This one was definitely much nicer than ours; first, their buildings looked right out over the Mediterranean. I mean, really, c'mon! We don't even get a river! Also, there's not so much of a water problem, so their campus consisted of pretty little pathways surrounded by trees and shrubbery. That, plus the lack of strict dress code, made AUB seem just like home, or more so, at least. We ended up having to buy umbrellas; and made a mad dash down the street to eat at Kebab-ji, a noted Lebanese restaurant, for lunch.
After that, we headed downtown to see if we could check out the Al-Omari mosque, which looked beautiful from the outside, and which we'd seen all lit up during our explorations of the previous evening. They didn't allow us in, because we aren't Muslim, but we got some good photos from the open doorway; absolutely beautiful building. We explored downtown some more, passing by the ruins of a Roman bath, and made our way towards one of the two remaining synagogues in Beirut. It was weird asking for directions, we were afraid to ask the armed policemen for the place directly!
We went back to the hotel and checked out the pool situation. They were closed for icky weather, but it looked pretty darn nice...several pools on a giant deck over the Mediterranean, with a few bars n such. Shame it was so cool and rainy out!!
After dressing up a bit we went out to a mall to meet a friend of Alyssa's who had studied with her in Egypt, like, five summers ago (Alyssa's in her mid-twenties and married). We met him and a friend at a restaurant in the mall that was Italian and Japanese food. I'm sure you can guess which one I went for!!
After that, the friend dropped us off at the hotel, where we prepared further for our night out, and then hailed a taxi to go to a club called iBar, downtown. Our fellow Americans had procured a reservation, and it ended up being super fun; I'm definitely a fan of the dance scene. Alyssa and I left around 1am (party animals, I know), which ended up being a good thing because there was some drama when the rest of the Americans tried leaving and the club threw a ridiculous tab at them and forbade them from leaving until it was paid....I dunno, kind of fit with the general concern of being ripped off fairly often because we look like tourists (taxi drivers claiming to not have change, etc etc). We've learned ways of dealing with it, like insisting that we know the taxi route is always 1.50JD, you can NOT tell me it's 15...things like that.
Saturday morning we woke up, packed our bags and checked out of the hotel before getting onto a bus headed for Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns about an hour north of Beirut, along the coast. It's chock full of Roman ruins and interesting little curio shops. Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and I explored the ruins and took an inordinate number of photos, doing the typical tourist thing. Definitely picked up a fez/tarboush, couldn't resist!
It was absolutely beautiful there; we went to a fish restaurant, right off a dock, whose owner was a bit of a tourist attraction himself in the old days, and lots of famous stars came to eat at this place. We definitely decided to splurge on a nice fish lunch, and it was SO worth it!
Hopped on a bus back to Beirut and watched the sun set over the Mediterranean the whole way. Back at the hotel we went onto the pool deck again to get splashed by the rather violent sea waves crashing on the rocks, then got our taxi to the airport. We met up with Ali and Julie at the airport and flew quickly back to Amman.
Overall a super fun, super expensive, weekend! I'd definitely recommend checking out Beirut, or Lebanon in general, if you're ever in this part of the world; It's absolutely beautiful, and a much more European kind of Middle East, which is both fun to see and makes me glad that I"m in a more "traditional" place like Jordan.
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