Saturday morning we were picked up at 6:45am by our friend Joumana and, after meeting up w\/ our friends Matthew and Mary Ann (as well as their two darling daughters), we made the trek to Baalbek, convoy-style. We were there in 2002 right after a blizzard, so the town and the ruins took on a considerably different dimension than that which we remembered. Under any circumstances, however, the ruins are a wildly impressive site. We have many visitors coming from the States in the late summer\/early fall and we’ve vowed that this should be the last historical site they see. Anything else by comparison is just a pile of rocks with some acanthus leaves carved in them. <\/p>\n
It’s commonly accepted that the the ruins are of Roman origin, but Joumana had a lot of interesting information about an alternate theory suggesting that they are actually of Lebanese origin, borrowing heavily from Roman and other styles.<\/p>\n
Photos don’t really do it justice, but I’ve borrowed two of Amy’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n After leaving the ruins, we more or less successfully dodged the post card and “antique Roman coin” merchants and visited the Amawi Mosque<\/a>, which was really quite beautiful in a simple and elegant way. Also, Amy had to dress like a Jawa to go inside.<\/p>\n It should be noted that Baalbek is also something of a Hezbollah<\/a> stronghold and Hez’B merchandise is available everywhere. One of our party–who shall remain anonymous–bought 4 tshirts for his\/her Bush-lovin’, conservative relatives back home. The fact that the merch was more than happily sold to an American just ads another layer to the irony.<\/p>\n Before leaving Baalbek, we paid the obligatory visit to the Palmyra Hotel. The Palmyra is over 125 years old and is Lebanon’s first Western-style hotel. It boasts a prestigious guestlist, including Charles de Gaulle, Kaiser Wilhelm, Amy Campbell, and Ethan Holda. I have to mention that when we stayed there in Dec. ’02, we were plenty steamed that they refused to turn on the heat. I believe I remarked at the time (in a blog we were keeping similar to this one) that Charles de Gaulle would never have stood for that shit.<\/p>\n We winged it home in the early afternoon and upon being dropped at our apartment, promptly lapsed into naps. We’d been up since 6am and still had a music festival to attend. [ PS: I found a dog or sheep skull in the grass, but much like the ruins, pictures don’t really do it justice. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amy generally does a much better job of the travelogery, but I thought I’d give my own account of the weekend. Friday I did a long work day. It is definitely an indication that I’m getting soft that 10 hours … Continue reading
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