Travels in the Levant

Here are some pictures from Syria and Lebanon. This is the first place we stayed at.

Here are our beds on the roof the first night. Notice the tears in the matresses. I don’t have a picture of our room the second night, but it was awsome.

This is the Leila (night) Restaurant and Terrace where we ate at our first night in Damascus. From left to right: me, Brian, Steven, Tyler, and Juan (the Argentinian guy.)

This is a picture of me in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. This is typical of what unveiled women put on to enter mosques (those that they are allowed to enter, that is.)

Windows in Damascus.

Cool watermellon on a hot summer day.

Here’s a picture of Tyler sipping Syrian brew at the Bab Sharki cafe in Damascus.

Here’s our Cancun-esque party outside of Beruit.

This is Place de l’Etoile in Beruit, a swanky area that was completely destroyed in the Lebanese civil war but has been rebuilt to look old.

So, we ended up getting an awsome room in the same hotel our second night in Damascus, it had four beds, its own (mini) shower, and a FAN! We were in heaven even at a pricey $6 a night, we figured we could splurge since the roof beds were only $3 a piece. I think the hotel used to be an old villa, because it had an awsome central courtyard, draped with vines, typical of the traditional Arab-style house.

On Sunday we took a cab up to the top of a hill so we could have a full view of Damascus, which is many, many times larger than Amman. Then we headed to the bus station where we got a service taxi to Beruit for $10 each, which seemed outrageous, but we couldn’t bargain lower as all the servees drivers seemed to know each other and collude to keep prices high. The cab driver insisted on taking our 4 American passports away, as he said the main building needed them. We all kind of panicked, imagining how much more he could sell our passports for than what we were paying him. While we were nervously waiting, we were accosted by a number of vendors who wanted to sell us pink socks and fake Puma t-shirts. We started freaking out about our missing passports after about 20 minutes in the hot sun, and Tyler ran off to rescue them. Eventually we did end up getting them back but vowed not to let our passports out of sight again. The ride to the Lebanese border was relatively painless and we were easily able to purchase Lebanese visas for $16 each. We drove about another 30 minutes from the border to Beruit and then caught a cab to Fanar, where the Jabres live.

The first thing we saw at the house was a 20 foot high wall and a massive iron gate. We rang the bell and a man came down to open the gate for us. His name was Anton, and we have decided his position is that of the butler. The house is incredible, with glass doors almost completely covering the back wall, which slide to open onto the patio. I’ll bring pictures when I come back, as words don’t do it justice. Anton showed us to the guest house, which has two lovely bedrooms and a bathroom (with an actual shower AND bathtub!), all made up in white. We were in awe, being the dirty, cheap backpackers that we are. We felt like we had stepped into a world that was not our own, and wondered if we should really be there.

Patrick arrived after about 15 minutes, and after quick introductions, told us that he had just come from an awsome beach party in the north. So we all changed into our bathing suites and jumped into his car, to drive about 25 minutes to Edde Sands Beach, currently the most trendy beach to be seen at. The admission cost was a whopping $12, more than our entire ride from Damascus to Beruit. Tyler, who went to Cancun one year for spring break, said that this beach party was essentially exactly like those in Cancun, sponsored by MTV. Alcohol was everywhere, and a beer cost about $6. Right on the beach front there was a stage, with a DJ and dancing Smirnoff girls wearing tube tops and hot pants. People were buying huge $3500 bottles of Moet and spraying them into the crowd. The guys on stage threw shots into the masses of dancing, wet, scantily-clad bodies. Everywhere we looked there were guys in bathing suites and girls wearing tiny bikinis. This was probably the worst culture shock I’ve had in a long time, largely because we had no idea Lebanon would be like this and because we didn’t even know there was a beach scene here. I had arrived in Beruit wearing my long-sleeved, baggy nun shirt only to exchange it for a bikini. Tyler, Brian, Steven, and I were completely in shock. We basically stood in the crowd, open-mouthed, watching the dancing and drinking and carrying on.

We stayed at the beach until late and then headed back to the house to eat dinner with Patrick and his mother. The food was deliscious, the service impecable, and we had no idea what to do with ourselves. We had been eating at shwarma and fallafel stands, sleeping on the roof, and being eaten alive by bugs and roaches in Damascus, so Beruit was a complete 180 in all aspects. Massive, massive culture shock.

Yesterday, Monday (the start of the Lebanese work week) we woke up late for breakfast and ended up hanging around till lunch, when Patrick got back from his Spanish lesson. He offered to take us out in the Meditteranian on his speed boat where we met up with his friend Anna, and sped out into the water. My dislike of fast boats all came back very quickly, but I managed to survive and even drove the boat for a while. We saw the ruins of a (crucader?) castle and where the president 50 years ago had his summer house. We went to Edde Sands again, but didn’t have to pay since we came in our own boat. Wow.

We ate dinner again with the family and today we have been exploring the city ourselves; we just got done visitn the American University of Beruit (AUB), which is incredibly beautiful. Possible study abroad? My hour in the internet cafe is over, I’ll try to write more tomorrow. Beruit is amazing, and many of its streets look just like those in Europe. The mixture of Christians and Muslims in very interesting, as there are only slightly fewer of the former. Lebanon seems incredibly safe and makes me wonder why there is such an ominous travel warning on the state department website. Strange.