|
Has anyone been around Lebanon and have any particular favorite suggestions? My wife and I are going for 12 days in October and are surprised at how little info there is online about it -- there's Wikitravel, a few moribund (TripAdvisor) or dead (Lonely Planet, Guide du Routard) forums, and the Bradt travel guide and... that's it? (E: Petit Futé has a small —144 page — guide, and Lonely Planet has a 55 page chapter, I mean Lebanon is small but jeez it's pretty dense with things to do; even Mongolia has its own Lonely Planet book. Anyway, not really a fan of Lonely Planet, way too much time spent on hotel and restaurant reviews that are IME almost useless to have in printed format.) Not that this forum gets that many posts, but generally the advice here is way better and detailed than I ever see on TA/LP/Routard, and there's the off chance someone lived there or spent a lot of time there! We're aiming to spend both weekends in Beirut, one of them a long weekend with friends also flying in for a 3 day weekend, then we were going to take 6 days to go around the rest of the country, I guess doing something like Byblos -> Qadisha -> Baalbek -> Zahle -> Beirut, which would skip Tyre, Sidon, and Tripoli. We've been around a lot of MENA so don't necessarily need to cross cities off our lists, and would rather spend more time in a nice city than try and "hit highlights" of all of Lebanon's major cities. I guess a big question is: where would you stay? Everything is close enough so that you could do one base in Beirut and then one base outside (like Byblos or Jounieh)? I did ask one Lebanese friend for suggestions, and this was his suggestion, but he's also Maronite and I noticed afterwards that this route stays exclusively in the Christian-majority parts of Lebanon (minus Baalbek) so I'm wondering about whether or not that's a coincidence, or if the highlights of the country for foreign travellers just happen to coincide with religious boundaries. We speak French and Arabic, so we're not worried about going way off the beaten track if someone has an amazing recommendation for some place that's in the backcountry up a 5 km winding dirt mountain road. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Jun 6, 2019 |
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 10:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:31 |
|
|
Well, I guess Lebanon isn’t such a common trip for a forum that’s predominantly North American. Anyways I’ll post a basic trip report here later if anyone’s curious. Regarding where to stay, it seems that tourism is indeed centered in Beirut and in the Christian-majority parts of the country in Mount Lebanon, so it wasn’t just my friend’s bias. It’s shockingly easy to observe on one’s own: look at AirBnB, then center on an area, and see how many properties are available. Places like Baalbek or Sidon will have like three apartments available, while Bsharri or Zahle or Joumanirh will have dozens to hundreds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such striking differences for cities of similar size and close geographic distance.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2019 23:05
|
|
|
I've been eyeballing this thread to see if there would be any replies, so I look forward to your trip report. It's been one of my goals for decades to visit Beirut in particular, but I'd enjoy hearing more.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2019 20:10
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm also following!
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2019 17:56
|
|
|
Saladman posted:I did ask one Lebanese friend for suggestions, and this was his suggestion, but he's also Maronite and I noticed afterwards that this route stays exclusively in the Christian-majority parts of Lebanon (minus Baalbek) so I'm wondering about whether or not that's a coincidence, or if the highlights of the country for foreign travellers just happen to coincide with religious boundaries. We speak French and Arabic, so we're not worried about going way off the beaten track if someone has an amazing recommendation for some place that's in the backcountry up a 5 km winding dirt mountain road. Vessel From Denny fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jul 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2019 19:39
|
|
|
Vessel From Denny posted:This was my experience in Lebanon with my native friend as well. Based out of Beirut and making day trips out to Sidon and Byblos. Batroun has some ancient Phoenician wall in the ocean you can swim around which is nice, and the Mseilha Fort is really neat. If you like wine there are a few nice wineries in the valley with beautiful views and a bunch of places that sell homemade arak by the gallon. The most memorable place on the trip had to be the Hezbollah museum near Mleeta, a lot of mixed emotions in that place. Not really into wine, but we’re into the paired food and we’re not not drinkers either and wr’re definitely into views. Did you go to Kefraya/Khoury/Ksara? Or are there some less famous but nice ones too? The Mleeta museum looks surprisingly fancy and modern, but I’m a bit sketched out by supporting anything that fetishizes war, especially modern or ongoing wars. We’re probably going to do 3 days in Beirut, then rent a car and do 2in Byblos, 2 in Qadisha, then via Baalbek to 2 nights in Deir el Qamar, then drop off the car and 2 at the end in Beirut. The days at the end and beginning are full since we land at like 1am and the return flight departs at like 3am. Probably will take one of those days in Beirut to do a bus trip to Tripoli, Sidon, or Tyre. Also thinking about making it a 14 day instead of 12 day trip so we can wander around Mount Lebanon more, and / or visit all three of Tyre, Sidon, and Tripoli.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2019 22:07
|
|
|
Saladman posted:Not really into wine, but we’re into the paired food and we’re not not drinkers either and wr’re definitely into views. Did you go to Kefraya/Khoury/Ksara? Or are there some less famous but nice ones too?  The museum definitely isnt for everyone but I appreciated seeing a radically different perspective than you see in western media, as zealous and tasteless as some of it is.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2019 15:21
|
|
|
Oops, poo poo, didn't mean to post anything, just made an epic copy and paste error / brain hiccup between here and the text editor I use for trip planning. Booked tickets, 14 full days. Seems like quite a lot of time for a small country but... OTOH we spent 16 days in Israel and Jordan a few years ago and it wasn't even close to enough time to go around half of either country. Saladman fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jul 29, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2019 20:44
|
|
|
Lebanon might be a small country, but it sure takes a while to get anywhere: 15 hours of driving for 650 km across 10 days, and with 11 of our 15 nights booked. We'll decide the last 4 on the spot depending on weather and how much time more time we might want to commit to a place. Tyre seems kind of boring so we'll probably skip it? The only thing people ever mention about it is the beach. I guess we'll check out Mleeta even though it kind of sketches me out, but I guess it's no worse than going to a modern military museum anywhere else in the world.  A Lebanese friend warned me that hiking might not be so nice that time of year, but... https://weatherspark.com/m/99217/10/Average-Weather-in-October-in-Beirut-Lebanon I think they might just have a different standard for what 'cloudy' and 'rainy' mean, since the cloud cover and rain probability/amount in Beirut in mid-October is the same as the Côte d'Azur in the middle of July: https://weatherspark.com/m/55205/7/Average-Weather-in-July-in-Menton-France Now, to figure out where I can fly a drone without ending up in a military or militia prison. I've gotten low-key obsessed with improving the photographs of villages and landmarks on Wikipedia, and most of the articles on Lebanon are in dire need.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2019 11:01
|
|
|
i can't help you, as i haven't personallly been, but i see semi regular posts about lebanon on a few of the reddit travel subforums (travelnopics and solotravel). maybe you can find some information there
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 16:56
|
|
|
Davincie posted:i can't help you, as i haven't personallly been, but i see semi regular posts about lebanon on a few of the reddit travel subforums (travelnopics and solotravel). maybe you can find some information there Thanks for the suggestion. There's a bit of traffic on SoloTravel. TravelNoPics is pretty thin (only 2 matched topics, neither of which is about Lebanon). I never use Reddit but I guess I could also ask stuff on r/lebanon, although at this point I think we're pretty much set. The Lebanese I know don't know much about Lebanon besides Beirut and their parents' home villages, but I guess that's pretty standard for people from many parts of the world. I had the impression for some reason that Lebanon was a tourist hotspot. Maybe not compared to its region, competing against Turkey or Egypt or Israel or Greece, but at least on par with like Cyprus or Jordan. So... it doesn't seem like I'll actually need to get off the beaten path very much to get to places that aren't crowded with busloads of group tours. Even all the blog posts I found about Baalbek said they were pretty much the only people there when they visited. (I don't mind lots of people around, but I am allergic to shops selling kitchsy nicknacks and especially to large tour groups wearing headphones.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:31
|
|
|
I visited Lebanon in the Fall of 2010. We stayed in Beirut each night, and actually only went out of the city one day, to Baalbek. Those blog posts are right. There's never more than a dozen people there. The guards there care more about their playstation than about the ruins, but they'll definitely take your money. It makes you feel like one of those people on the 19th century engravings, the rich Europeans who came there and stood on a ladder to write their names on the columns in charcoal. For me and my friend, Beirut was just one big party, because we'd spent the previous four months in Kuwait. But there was plenty to see too, in a just-walking-around-the-city kind of way. If you know the flags of the different militias and parties, you can quickly tell in what kind of neighborhood you are just from those (or from the portraits of Iranian or Palestinian leaders on the walls). I don't know off the top of my head the places we went to see, but there was an archaeological museum towards the south of the city, so that has to be the National Museum. I think we went to at least one other museum too. We stayed in a small hotel somewhere in Gemmayzeh, but if were to go back I'd stay in Hamra, which is where you might be staying, guessing from the marker. They'd only just renovated a few of the streets coming off Nejmeh Square back then, and I gather more has been restored in the mean time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2019 17:14
|
|
|
Lebanon: Super nice and low hassle. It's too bad that everyone's first and often only experience with the MENA region is Morocco and Egypt -- and within them, the worst of Marrakech and Luxor. Lebanese are super chill, even the taxi drivers and people working in the souqs. Will post more later on, but so far two thumbs up. I guess it lacks the Must See sights of Egypt, but otherwise I'm surprised at how few European/North American tourists I see here. The tourists I see here are either: (a) older people (50-75) on large group tours; (b) young Arab-speaking couples (c) like one white French girl who came here a lot as a kid and came back by herself as an adult to see what it's like outside of a child's perspective. There aren't many tourists at all though, even at major sites like the central Hariri mosque and the next-door cathedral in central Beirut. Interestingly there were a lot of Muslim tourists (probably Lebanese but I'm not good at placing accents) at the Our Lady of Lebanon cathedral in Harissa, and in several of the churches I've been in. I don't think I ever saw a woman wearing a hijab in a Christian site in Egypt.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2019 17:45
|
|
|
Actual quote from a from a GCC business contact concerning Lebanese and Egyptians: "Egyptians will rob you, every time, BUT Lebanese will slit your throat!" I love getting people from different regions going on each other.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2019 07:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:31 |
|
|
We got back on Monday, had a wonderful trip, and are 1 billion times glad that we rented a car because public transport was pretty catastrophic while we were there due to the protests, but actually all the roads were open except for one day (or, main highways were briefly closed but the side road was open, leading to many 5 minute detours). It's too bad how terrified Lebanese are of their own country, but I guess Yugoslavia is like that still too. When we were in Bsharri our hosts were SURE we would never be able to drive into Tripoli, we'd be stopped by roadblocks, and by cops, and when we got there it would be violent (they're Sunnis there, don't you know!). Likewise, they said we should just go straight to Zahle and skip Baalbek on our way out because it's too dangerous in Baalbek to visit. Baalbek was totally fine, I had to high-five some kid to drive through a roadblock? So danger. As far as the actual sights of the country: very compact, amazing variation in landscapes within tiny distances -- like half an hour goes from sunny 32°C palm trees and beaches in Tripoli, to frigid deep fall colors in the Alpine landscape of Bsharri and Laqlouq. The driving was very easy, roads are wide and well-maintained, similar to French quality overall I'd say, and far better than Italy/Greece. Driving style was pretty much the same as Italy, but with not nearly so much traffic once you're out of Beirut. I don't know why people fetishize and exaggerate how it is to drive in MENA countries; outside of Cairo it's really not any worse than Naples or Athens. Lebanon was super nice and chill and while there's no "MUST SEE 100%" site like the pyramids or Petra or whatever, you get a lot of the MENA experience without the hassle of being in a MENA country that gets tourists. Sexual harassment is nonexistent for tourists (I mean, I'm a man and I was with my wife most of the time, but a French french of my wife's that we visited who lives there said the same thing), and amazingly financial harassment of tourists is also not a thing, even in touristy areas like the streets in front of Baalbek. No sob stories about "oh we're in financial crisis please spend $20 on this trinket that you don't want" or anything. You can walk around anywhere and take photos and stand out without anyone bothering you, you can walk through a souk and peruse without anything more aggressive or irritating beyond a single simple "please, come in". In Beirut itself, French and English seemed to be widely spoken, with it being fairly random whether someone spoke French or whether they spoke English (though English predominantly), while outside of Beirut the English/French level of many people seemed to be like... maybe A2, being generous, at which point Arabic was much more useful. However every menu in the country is written in French-or-English and Arabic, so even if you stop by some roadside cafe in the Beqaa valley you'll be able to order, and like 75% of the menus on Lebanese restaurants is going to be familiar to everyone (hummus, shawarma, shish tawouk, etc). Road signage was hot garbage, and often only in Arabic once you were off the main roads, but it's 2019 so everyone has Google maps anyway so who cares? Data is insanely expensive and highly necessary, as WiFi is terrible basically everywhere in the country, so you'll probably want at least 3 GB/week of data, which will run you like $30/week. Electricity cuts are pervasive but don't really affect tourists, you'll see the power cut off and then 10 seconds later come back on when it switches to generators. Terrible way to run a country but it's almost invisible to someone just passing through, unless you're staying at AirBnBs, in which case you might get hit by the 3 hour per day scheduled outages. If you're really into religious history then I guess Lebanon has a number of "must see sights", but for me and my wife it was more like a massively compressed "general experience of the entire Mediterranean region" stuffed into a miniature package. If Walt Disney made a scale model "Mediterranean World" facsimile, he'd make Lebanon. We really had an enjoyable time there—my wife has wanted to go for forever—and visited a few friends. I wouldn't recommend it to people who are into bucket list checklists of poo poo They've Seen, but it's certainly historically unique and has the benefit of every tourist site in the country belongs to you and maybe like one other person. And with no loving touts, anywhere, ever, not even a single time, at a single historic site, which was incredible. We also saw way overwhelmingly more churches than anything else in the country, which I think will be a typical tourist's experience, as much of the Shia south is off limits (without permits and hassle from the UN and the Lebanese military), and the Shia Beqaa valley is just not very interesting or nice to stay in, and Sunni Tripoli is cool for like a day, but at some point the novelty of being a mini-Cairo will wear off. Like everywhere else in the Mediterranean: so many cats. Unlike everywhere else in the Mediterranean: food is loving expensive, every basic restaurant in the country that is more fancy than selling shawarma is going to be like €12-€15 for a standard main course, and a nice restaurant easily €30pp for an appetizer, main course, and water. There was also a tremendous amount of misinformation, and probably some deliberate lies, about the Lebanese protests while we were there as well, like Beirut being under "lockdown" (outrageously false) or the "atmosphere of fear" (also blatantly false). I was not checked at a checkpoint driving in the entire country during the protests, even once, and sure I'm a white guy in a car with rental plates, but I also never saw any other cars stopped and checked either, ever, even once, even while driving into central Beirut. Anyway I'll post a few photos since they're relatively unusual to stumble across online: Baatara Gorge, there's a big waterfall there in spring and geologically the whole place makes no sense to me as the valley is inverted (not pictured here)  Urbexing in central Beirut; lots of ruins which you can traipse around; that staircase is a loving deathtrap though  View from the top of the staircase in the previous photo. The fist with "revolution" written on it in Arabic was the center site of the Lebanese protests, and it was torn down on Tuesday by some supporters of the Shia factions, although tbh the protest attendance was dying out anyway so it seemed an unnecessarily aggressive way to take it down:  Mseilha Fort  Byblos Ruins 
Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Dec 20, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 31, 2019 11:53
|
|