Ancient Ruins and Modern Politics

Saturday was another day of of outings - to Baalbek in the east close to the Syrian border and then to Beiteddine, in the central part of the country. The drive to Baalbek took us through the Beqqa Valley, also known as Lebanon's bread basket. Where our excursions the previous day had us driving up and down narrow mountainous roads, the Beqqa Valley is flat and fertile with vineyards, orchards, and farms extending to meet the mountains that form the border between Syria and Lebanon. In fact, parts of the Beqqa Valley are Hezbollah controlled so the yellow flag with the green machine gun on the center and pictures of various Hezbollah leaders were prominent on the streets and buildings. This isn't particular to Hezbollah though-- throughout Lebanon you can tell the political stronghold of one candidate or party by the pictures and flags that adorn the buildings in the villages.

Baalbek is one of the most amazing places I've ever seen. Originally it was built as a temple to Baal in about 2000 BC and was then added on to and converted to a temple to Jupiter by the Romans when they took over. In addition the temple to Jupiter, the largest in the world, there is also a smaller, albeit more intact, temple to Bacchus. It is amazing how much of the structure, especially the temple of Bacchus, is still intact given not only it's age but also that it had to survive through various political conflicts as well as several earthquakes (Baalbek lies on a fault line that runs parallel to the San Andreas fault). We spent well over an hour exploring the ruins, much of the time with our mouths open in amazement, and we could have spent longer there if it hadn't been so hot. Baalbek was known as Heliopolis, the city of the sun, by the Greeks and it was apparent why-- not a good day to forget to put on sun screen, which unfortunately I did so I was a little pink when we left.

After leaving Baalbek we drove back through the valley and up into the mountains again to Beiteddine. Meaning "house of religion" in Arabic, Beiteddine is a Druze stronghold (Druze is an esoteric, gnostic sect of Islam) and the highlight of Beiteddine is the palace, built in the late 1700s and early 1800s by a local emir who used the palace as his residence until it was taken over first by the Ottoman government and then later by the French. Today the president of Lebanon holds summer meetings in the palace and, like Baalbek, it's also home to a big music and arts festival which had just ended so they were disassembling the bleachers in the courtyard when we visited.

Today the Ayoob clan is off to the village to visit relatives. I was going to go along but the combination of too much sun yesterday and too little sleep the past few nights led to a migraine this morning so instead I am going to spend a lazy afternoon reading-- perhaps walking over to the pool at the Phoenician (the drawback to the Vendome is that being a boutique hotel there isn't a pool but as it's part of the Intercontinental group we can use the pool at their other hotel, which is just a few blocks away). Not sure what the plan for tomorrow during the day is . . . we leave for Berlin late tomorrow night so most likely my next post will be from Germany so as they say over there . . . bis spater!