So I spent the second part of my spring break in Lebanon. One of my friends, Senna, is half Lebanese, so she was visiting family and brought a bunch of people with her. They all went like immediately when class let out, but my friend Samyra (whose mom and brother had visited her in Cairo) and I flew in a little later. Sadly, we missed it when they went to see the famous cedar trees (I mean, there is a cedar tree on the flag), but for the most part, all they really did was sit around and drink and smoke nargilah (spelling?), which is shisha in Egypt and hookah in the US. As it turns out, that was mostly what I did too, but it was pretty fun and I was a little sick of doing too much of that tourism thing.

Anyway, Samyra and I got in around lunch time and got picked up by everyone and the hired driver. We went to Beirut and got food near the American University in Beirut. Then we rented bikes and rode them along the corniche.

The bike rental place. I guess it's popular. Anyway, I really like riding bikes but I was wearing a skirt, which kind of sucked. And it was like not the best skirt I could have been wearing, as it got caught in the chain a few times and ripped a little bit. I still wear it though.



I think one of my friends who was traveling with a different group in Lebanon said that these were called the Five Pillars or the Five Pigeons or something. He said he was a little let down because the Lonely Planet guidebook really hyped them up, but I thought they were pretty cool. I wasn't really expecting anything though. It was sort of like Napoleon Dynamite, in that sense.

You know, I really thought I might have been so excited about being somewhere that wasn't all dry and desert, that I had sort of hyped up Lebanon, but Beirut still looks really wonderful, even in these pictures.

Afterwards, we went to Senna's cousin Mira's apartment. It had a really beautiful view of the city that I must have deleted because I am dumb. We had a delicious Lebanese dinner, and then got dolled up to go "bar hopping". We went to bars, but it was not a particularly hopping night, since I think it was like a Wednesday. But we did end up at this cute bar that played salsa and tango and a lot of people danced. I think the next day we sat around Senna's house and did nothing.

The day after that, probably, we went to Tripoli, which is a mostly Muslim shopping district. I don't have a lot of pictures because it looked like a lot of places in Cairo. Also, Senna's family is Christian, so Mira and her mom spent the entire time convinced that it was dangerous and that bad things might happen to us. Anyway, if I have something that is cute and from Lebanon, I most likely bought it in Tripoli.


I do remember that in Tripoli, we met up with our companion Kelsey, who had planned to go to Syria on her own (which did not end up happening) and she had the most delicious shawarma I had ever eaten. A lesson that I have learned but still do not follow: chicken shawarma is better. It's just that meat gyros are better, so I am always convinced that meat shawarmas will be better too. But it's not true. Trust me, I have tried it so many times. Anyway, I think it is cute that the Lebanese seem to serve french fries a lot, and to put them on their shawarmas. When we ate with Senna's family, her aunt would always cook fries. They were also better, because the only oil they seem to have in Lebanon is olive oil and it is the best olive oil I have ever had. In Senna's house, they had these big barrels of it. Apparently, on a previous shopping trip, they weren't aware of the big barrels full of olive oil, and so they bought some and it was definitely worse.

So anyway, I think we spent a few more days pissing around Senna's house. I should note that Senna's parents, although they live in the US, own a house in a little village about an hour outside of Beirut. So in addition to us being lazy, it was also kind of costly to hire a driver to take us into the city for a day, so instead we hung around. We played cards. We hung out with Senna's cousins. We drank birras (and cleaned out Senna's grandma's store's supply). We smoked a lot of the shisha. Someone bought a lot of delicious flavors of shisha and so we mixed and tried them out and it was great. Maybe one of the nights, we went to a fancy bar in a town outside of Beirut. Um... one of us got really trashed, but mommy and daddy, I assure you it wasn't me. They played ridiculous music. Oh do you know what the biggest hit in the Middle East appears to be?

This song [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSvrf84UjFg ] is one of those hits that is so popular that every club plays it and everyone cheers and the DJ mutes parts from the chorus so that everyone in the club can sing along to it. It is probably up there with the Habibi song that is playing in all of the taxi cabs.

Anyway, the next morning we were all hungover but we had agreed to go to Saida (I hazily remember someone comparing it to Alexandria? Maybe it was just me) with a different aunt of Senna's. The problem was that we had to get up at something like 8AM and some of us had thought it was a great idea to smoke some shisha and drink some beers (since you don't drink that much at bars because it is so expensive) before bed, so I don't think I slept until at least 4AM. I think a lot of us weren't planning on going after that night, but I wanted to see more of Lebanon, there was some guilt about standing up Senna's aunt and cousin, and there was supposed to be a two hour car ride during which we could nap. The car ride was actually like an hour long, but we had a tasty breakfast of konafah (I can't describe it but it is delicious and also really really sweet) and some Turkish coffee on the sea front.

Then, since we were more awake, we went to some fort.



I don't know what the deal was with the fort. I also don't know why there wore those weird round rocks in the walls.


Locals hanging around because they can. Just like in Egypt. Probably didn't have to pay to get in either. Unlike us foreigners, who had to pay like $5 USD to get in. Interesting fact about Lebanon: they have their own system of money (Lebanese Lira I think it is) but they also use American bills, especially for expensive purchases. And if you had a big US bill that needed to be broken, it wasn't uncommon for them to give half the change in USD and half in Lira.




Um... then we walked to another fort or something. I think I was spending a lot of this time gossiping. Probably because Senna's aunt had a friend who came along to be a guide (she was probably more familiar with the area) and our friend Brendan thought she was really hot and so it was kind of funny how much he was trying to hit on her.



We then trekked through the markets and slums.


I thought it was really cool how they were all like stores of skilled craftspeople who made chairs and wooden clogs and stuff.




After that lengthy tour, we ate at a sort of restaurant and we had fresh fish and it was delicious of course. There were probably more fries, as well as many other yummy things. Lebanese food is really good. I mean, I don't mind Egyptian food, but it wasn't as good, and most of it is lame versions of Lebanese food. A creepy cat watched us eat. It was cute until we realized it was missing like half its face and that you could see it's teeth through the hole in its cheek.

This is a cart that sold bread that was shaped to hang on racks. In other words, the bread looked like purses, which I thought was pretty nifty.

Then we were driven to this statue and basilica and church. The sermons were held in a little cave that was sort of a church now. I think that Mary stopped in that little cave when she was going somewhere, and so it was sacred. I didn't take pictures because there was a service going on.

Anyway, we climbed up the statue.




I thought it was totally cool that the design in the stair railings had crosses and Jesus fish, and sometimes they had both.


Great views, eh?

This was a sign outside the cemetery. Speaking of signs, there was a great billboard that we saw around the city, which I didn't get a good picture of. Basically there were a lot of signs up encouraging people to vote in the 2009 elections, including one that had a picture of this beautiful woman and that said something like "It is beautiful to vote". So this one store had a billboard up that was a picture of a woman and it said "Who cares about elections?", with the implication that women don't care about elections, they care about shopping at Magma.

This is the big window in the basilica. Can anyone tell me what that thing means in the middle? The thing that looks kind of like that thing on maps that tell you which way is north (I forgot what it is called). It was a symbol that seemed to appear frequently, at least at this place.

So after this, we lazed around some more. At one point we took a walk around Senna's village.



I took some more pictures of the village, but not very many more, because then Kelsey and I decided that we would rather tan on the roof of Senna's house.

Actually that was our last night, and I liked being on the roof so much, I decided to sleep up there. It was really cute, except that I was eaten alive by bugs, and it was really cold when it was dark so I had like five thick blankets on me but then when the sun came up it became really hot really fast but there were still bugs. But still, it was nice.

So on our last day, we took a telefriq (tell-eh-freak), which is like one of those slow cable ferry cars that take you up high so you can get a great view of places like Beirut and like Cedar Point.


It took us to this sacred statue of Mary probably that one day was facing one direction and the next day had moved to face a completely new direction, which was a miracle. I didn't take interesting pictures. But my friends Brendan and Joey both bought a cheap version of Jesus Monopoly which was in Arabic. Apparently, instead of going to jail, you were sent to "go pray".

Then yet another one of Senna's aunts, who was a professor at the AUB gave us a little tour of the campus. It was much cuter that the AUC, but I was maybe a little biased with the frustration that comes with disorganization and poor administration and the need to go back and forth across campus to fill out a single form to unlock the ID card that lets you into the library. Also, it was really cute because all over campus, there were like little park benches secluded in the bushes on which couples were canoodling. It was a bit of a culture shock because that sort of thing you would just never see in Cairo. Usually not the couples and definitely not the canoodling.



The AUB had a new campus center that was built recently. Apparently it won a few awards. I thought it was interesting because all over the campus center, there were thin wires hanging like this. It looks totally wimpy now, but when it fills out with vines, I am pretty sure it will look really cool. It's kind of weird to think about design that is meant to utilize nature, but that will also require a few years to achieve its intended effect.

Then we walked around Beirut some more before catching a plane home to Cairo.

There was a lot of cool graffiti.

Anyway, the one thing I will say about going back to Cairo: Even though I loved Greece and Lebanon because they had better food and better scenery and better weather, and even though Cairo will never be my city because I will never be fully comfortable there (for social and economic reasons), both times I flew back there, it was still comforting to know it, at least to the point where at least I knew how things worked and that I had someplace that was mine and that I didn't have to be guided around like a stupid tourist.