{"id":65,"date":"2006-06-17T13:22:52","date_gmt":"2006-06-17T21:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/17\/beirut-wrap-up\/"},"modified":"2012-11-23T20:04:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T04:04:07","slug":"beirut-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/17\/beirut-wrap-up","title":{"rendered":"Beirut Wrap-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"P\u00c4\u00b1ctu\u00c4\u00b1es<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 \"P\u00c4\u00b1ctu\u00c4\u00b1es<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0\"P\u00c4\u00b1ctu\u00c4\u00b1es<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been enjoying Beirut and its surrounding area for the last 3 days.<\/p>\n

When I was not\u00c2\u00a0walking around town looking for streets that do not exist anymore,\u00c2\u00a0trying to take service taxis to get me somewhere for the regular 1000LL ($1 = 1500LL) or waiting for the 10PM bus ;), I visited some places of interest.<\/p>\n

Without any doubts, the highlights have been the\u00c2\u00a0National Museum and the Jeita\u00c2\u00a0Grotto.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

National Museum<\/strong><\/p>\n

The National Museum of Beirut is\u00c2\u00a0one of\u00c2\u00a0the best museum I have seen so far in the Middle-East. It has been fully restored after the war ended and amazingly, most of its collections and important items have been preserved thanks to\u00c2\u00a0ingenious systems and hard work of the museum\u00c2\u00a0staff. The whole story of how the\u00c2\u00a0collections were protected during the war and how the museum was restored and reopened are actually presented in a very nice 15 minutes movie.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The museum is very well organized and\u00c2\u00a0documented (in Arabic, French and English).\u00c2\u00a0The pieces that attracted me the most were the two sarcophagus of Achilles from the Roman period, the mosaic of the seven wise men, the young boys statues and the collection recovered from the two Phoenician kings in Byblos that are just mind boggling.<\/p>\n

Also to be noted is the mosaic of Byzantine period with the inscription “Envy is an evil. It has beauty however. It eats out the heart and the eyes of the jealous”<\/p>\n

For an overview of the collections,\u00c2\u00a0you can look at their website<\/a> that is very well done too!\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jeita Grotto<\/strong><\/p>\n

I visited the Jeita Grotto<\/a> (Caves of Jeita) yesterday. It is very\u00c2\u00a0close\u00c2\u00a0to Beirut\u00c2\u00a0so you can visit it as a half-day trip from there. The only bad thing about them\u00c2\u00a0is that\u00c2\u00a0the company that\u00c2\u00a0exploits them is\u00c2\u00a0actually\u00c2\u00a0trying to create some sort of an attraction park there and\u00c2\u00a0as a consequence, it is quite\u00c2\u00a0expensive to get in.<\/p>\n

But once you get into the caves you forget about it as the caves\u00c2\u00a0are just amazing. I have visited a lot of the caves of the South-West of France when I was 10 y\/o and I only remember the Gouffre de Padirac<\/a> to be that impressive. There are two caves; The superior cave is the most impressive in my opinion with very large open spaces and great looking stalagmite and stalactite formations. This is highly recommended.<\/p>\n

Both the\u00c2\u00a0museum and the\u00c2\u00a0caves did not allow taking pictures so you will have to check the respective websites to get an idea of what it looks like.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am now in Aleppo (Helab) back to Syria after a 7-hour bus ride.\u00c2\u00a0No incidents except for avery nice Syrian border immigration agent that was not happy with the performance of the\u00c2\u00a0French\u00c2\u00a0football team! He still let me through without any hassle though, Ouf\u00c2\u00a0:).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 I have been enjoying Beirut and its surrounding area for the last 3 days. When I was not\u00c2\u00a0walking around town looking for streets that do not exist anymore,\u00c2\u00a0trying to take service taxis to get me somewhere for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}