Byblos has a small and beautiful center with a lot of ruins from medieval temples and on the coast we could see the remains of the old crusaders defensive fort. During the night the city bursts with life and all the small streets get quickly filled with souvenir shops, music and lights. An amazing place for a beer or a delicious pancake - there is no need to mention we tried both.
In order to see the other face of Lebanon and check how does it feel to go there for a summer tourism we decided to take it easy and visit the beaches around Beirut. Not that there are no beaches in the capital itself but we were told that we should not go there for swimming as the water is quite dirty. That is why the first stop was 11 beach. This name reminds me constantly of a comedy joke with two Scottish guys trying to get to the 11th floor of a building using an elevator with voice commands :) But anyway, we paid the entrance fee and and enjoyed the warm sun. Yes, in Lebanon you have to pay in order to go to the nice and clean sand beaches and they think about your health as there is always a restaurant with cold beer and 'shisha'. The diversity of the beaches in Lebanon is quite big and some of the places are so hidden that there is no way you can find it on your own. It was great that we had our 'local' friend to show us around as we would have never guessed where to go. For one of the places you had to drive through a banana plantation, for the beach in Enfeh you have to go through the graveyard and after that through people's balconies. The sand beach in Tyr is huge and there are 59 restaurants right next to each other and each of them was full of people. We passed by one of the free beaches with the car and there were mainly Muslims there. To be honest i felt sorry for the women. They had bathing suits according to their religion that covers the whole body and looks like neoprene and in the unbearable heat they looked like a pack of penguins piled under the shadow of the umbrellas.
After the sea we climbed high uo into the mountains to Deir Al Qamar, a small village that is know as the 'capital of the emirates' It was very calm and pleasant place from where we continued to Beiteddine palace - The palace of Faith. It has been built in 1788 and according to the legend after it was completed the emir ordered that the hands and legs of the architect are to be cut off so that he would not be able to build another palace more beautiful than this one. Of course the emir did not pay to the workers as well but at least left them intact. Now the palace is quite trendy among the newly weds as while we wandered around we say a lot of weeding photo shoots.
As we expected the ruler had a harem and amazing bath. most probably he has been a maniac for clean feet as there were at least 20 places where you can wash your feet and only one toilet for example.
The last stop for the day was Tyr a city that is only about 20km from Israel border. They have really long coastline alley that is mainly used for riding motorbikes and where you can find small vans selling coffee and fresh. The people did not speak any english but we managed to ask for an umbrella for some shadow and the coffee they served us was awesome. The old city of Tyr is a maze of small narrow streets where we got lost with pleasure while looking for the 'old market'. By the time we managed to find the market most of the shops were already closed as it was Sunday.
But for me and for all the people that like 'stones' the best place was the old ruins from Roman times. Besides the stone paved streets, the remains of ancient churches, roman baths and columns we saw the biggest arena for horse chariot races. At both ends we could still see the columns marking the end of the track. Also part of 480 meter long tribunes where 28000 spectators used to sit are also standing.
We said Goodbye to this day and Lebanon with another amazing sunset
