Further Wanderings

Our voyage out of Beirut (and given the traffic, any trip out of Beirut qualifies as a voyage) took place on a Sunday morning. The Lebanese take Sunday as a day of rest much more seriously than most Canadians do, so this added a bit to the adventure. We caught a minibus headed south which eventually dropped us off at a motorway off-ramp. We’d been standing around wondering what to do for about five minutes when a taxi pulled up and asked us where we were going. “Beittedine?” he said. “6000 for two.” Sounded good to us, so off we went. (I’m using my own spelling here for the town of Beittedine… A hybrid of the English and Arabic ones that gets across how it’s actually pronounced.)

A portico leading off from the gardens of Beittedine Palace

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Our trip into Lebanon was a bit of an adventure in itself…

From Krak des Chevaliers we took a taxi to the town of Tal Kala, and from there a microbus to the border. Things at the border went smoothly enough, but once across it appeared we would be at the mercy of the predatory taxi drivers who hung around offering the only onward transport from that point. Thankfully, a bus full of Syrians headed down to Lebanon to work and/or visit family was pulling out of the border post just as we were leaving. We flagged the bus down and climbed aboard. This was no luxury coach (not by a long way) but the fascination of our fellow passengers at our presence there with them made it an entertaining 90 minutes. All in all it was a bit more expensive, a bit faster, and much more interesting that the simpler route which would have taken us back to Homs, Syria, then on a scheduled bus service across the border. The afternoon was just beginning as we arrived in Tripoli (Trablous in Arabic), Lebanon’s second largest city.

Building Facades in Tripoli’s medieval market

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