In Ali's Hands, Tripoli's Heritage Shines

A young baker's assistant hustles his precarious load through Tripoli's narrow market streets.

The next day, Julian and Emma were both out of commission with a strong cold, but Julian told me to go ahead with our planned visit to Tripoli on my own. Having already spent a few days exploring Beirut, I obliged, and picked up a bus bound for the northern port near the Syrian border.

In Tripoli, I picked my way across the Old City, which reminded me strongly of Aleppo, its Syrian cousin a few hundred kilometers to the northeast. It was still early in the morning when I reached the Citadel of Raymond de Saint Gilles (قلعة سان جيل), a towering castle named for the leader of the First Crusade who oversaw its construction around 1100 AD. Much of the castle was largely intact, and unlike the castles in Syria, this one was well restored and the grass lawns of its inner courtyards well tended. The citadel offered a view over the Old City and the sea in one direction and a river valley in the other, with snow-topped mountains in the distance.

Baalbek, Home to History and Hezbollah

Many of the fine details in the ruins are preserved today, along with inscriptions marking eons of construction and conquest.

After Beirut, Baalbek is perhaps Lebanon's second most famous tourist destination. On the day after Christmas, Julian, Emma, and I woke early to make the trip to the Beqaa Valley (سهل البقاع) to see the ruins of Baalbek (بعلبك), a once mighty Roman metropolis and current World Heritage Site.

On a street by our hotel, we flagged down a friendly, near-toothless taxi driver named Abu Ahmed. Rather than wrangle with buses all day, we decided to pay him the US$80 he asked to chauffeur us.

The drive to Baalbek took some two hours, and first led us over the mountains which lie inland from Beirut. The range was covered in snow and buried deeply in the clouds, so the going was definitely a little hair-raising, as we had been warned. Abu Ahmed slid his way over the mountains, however, and through many army checkpoints, none of which ever asked us to stop.

Down in the valley the weather was brisk but the ground free of snow. At the gate to the ruins, we

Tyre & Sidon: Seafood and Sightseeing in Southern Lebanon

Sidon's Sea Castle (قلعة البحر) is in remarkably good condition considering how precarious is its location.

We spent Christmas morning winding southward along the Lebanese coast in a half-filled minibus, with a crisp rain blowing off the Mediterranean. With the beach in sight, plentiful palm trees, aquamarine water, and the mild air, it hardly seemed like Christmas day, I mused. But then again, we are practically in the Holy Land; this is probably more like the original day than any "White Christmas" back in the States.

Julian, Emma, and I disembarked at the southern port of Tyre (صور), some 30km north of the Israeli border, and ate a seafood lunch in a cozy restaurant by the harbor. Outside the window, fishermen mended their nets along the docks.

Hopped up on cold medicine, Julian was borderline delirious and not much use in navigating the town's markets after lunch. Luckily, Lebanon is probably the one country in the world where the

On Christmas Eve, Exploring Beirut by Day and by Night

Some streets in the Lebanese capital were decked with Christmas lights, a welcome sight for me and other homesick travelers.

Last night I snapped up in bed at the sound of a huge explosion, sure that our hotel was being bombed. A moment later, another. Then the raindrops started. I breathed a sigh of relief and sunk back into my bed—it was just thunder. With all the bombings that still go on here in Beirut, I guess I'm just nervous.

This morning Julian and I ignored the rain and decided to explore some different parts of Beirut. We visited the American University, and found the campus quite beautiful even in this weather. We also toured the National Museum, which was full of Roman, Greek, Byzantine and Crusader era statues, coins, pottery, tombs, and other artifacts. The older Phoenician objects often had heiroglyphics, evidence of ancient Egypt's extensive influence on life and trade here in Lebanon in the first several millennia BC.

Hooked on Phoenicia: A Week in Lebanon

In Beirut, some buildings are no more than empty husks, pitted with the signs of war, while other have been wholly rebuilt.

Since I last saw him in Damascus, my friend Julian and I had been trying to find a chance to get together before I returned to the States. We settled on a week in Lebanon around Christmas, when his fiancée Emma would be visiting.

A few days before the holiday, the three of us met at Talal's New Hotel, a small backpacker joint in Beirut's Gemmayzeh neighborhood, and promptly headed out for some mezzeh (often described as "Lebanese tapas"). We caught up on each other's news, and I tried to digest what little of Beirut I had seen in my route from the airport to the hotel to the restaurant.

* * *

Back during my freshman year, my friend Mahmud invited me to his Arabic class for a screening of West Beyrouth (بيروت الغربية). One of my all-time favorites, the beautiful film tells the story of three