4 days in Beirut

 

 

Beirut and Lebanon are not evident choices as holiday destinations, despite the wealth of interesting places to visit in the country and its capital.

I had however been very eager to visit Lebanon for years, also because I had been living very close to it (from Abu Dhabi it's only 3,5 hours by plane). But there were always reasons to go elsewhere.  
Another Eid-holiday (announced only 10 days before & then still depending on the moonsighting) was coming up and as so often I registered it only when I thought it was too late (when planes are full).
I wasn’t keen at all on spending another holiday in the UAE, when summer is still in full swing, with its unbearable heat and humidity (especially the humidity which according to one of my British friends here can only be described as ‘gross’ – the minute you step out of the 24/7 air conditioned inside spaces, you’re immediately drenched and look as if you just stepped out of the shower, and your cannot see through your sunglasses because of the dampness). The perpetual contrast between the very dry air conditioned air inside and the intolerable humidity and heat outside is too much for the human body  – lasting about 6 months - takes a heavy toll on the physical (and mental) sanity.

Motivated by the prospect  of 'cooler' places, I searched the net and – low and behold – managed to come up with 2 reasonably priced plane tickets! To Beirut. Yay! Finally. I couldn’t believe my luck.

The Eid al Adha is the most important date of the muslim calendar, the biggest celebration of the year. That makes for tens of thousands of muslims hopping on planes to see their families in their home countries.

Since we had already visited Jordan, Egypt and  Iran, and Syria was not an option, there was no valid excuse anymore not to take a short holiday in Lebanon.

Many people know Beirut only as a former warzone. Even though the traces of this past are visible everywhere in the city, we discovered not only the great Mediterranean Sea climate (29-32 degrees), the greenness of the city with its cypress trees and potted plants and flowers everywhere,  the view of the mountains which  are very close to the city, but we were also welcomed by a vibrant, young city and very friendly inhabitants.

Of course the traces of the 15-year long civil war are omnipresent. Dilapidated buildings and facades with bullet holes in it are everywhere. We even saw street art that made use of the bullet holes, which only goes to show the resilience of the inhabitants of this city.

                                                        Street art on a wall riddled by bullets
        
                                                       

 

                  Some of the dilapidated buildings were not renovated after the war, so they would serve as a reminder of the 15-year long war that ravaged the city

 

Beirutis are happy to show off their city and to chat away in their mixture of French, Arabic and English, which I adopted very quickly after a couple of days. Nobody here bothered me asking why I spoke Arabic. It is just a matter of fact and a normal given in Lebanon to speak Arabic and to throw the occasional French word into the conversation, and often I was addressed in Lebanese dialect and mistaken for a local, which never happened to me in any Arab country before. But maybe describing Beirut as “an Arab country” doesn’t do it justice. Churches are everywhere and church bells are ringing even though it is Eid al Adha. The first area we stayed in, Achrafieh, is full with bars, small shops and winding roads that lead to downtown and the seaside. In downtown (but not only there), alcohol is served on the many street terraces. Almost every area we walked through, had at least a liquor bar opening up into the street (unthinkable in Abu Dhabi/Dubai) opened throughout Eid.

1.       Arriving in Beirut

We arrived in Beirut in the early evening on Tuesday (29^th of August). The sun was setting as our plane approached Beirut. A big bonus when you’re arriving during the day, is the incredible view you get from the plane. First we flew over the high-rise buildings that make up a big part of Beirut’s city center, bordering the sea. Then we had an impressive view of Lebanon’s landmark, Pigeon rock. This is a rock with a hole in the middle, standing in the sea next to Beirut’s corniche (seaside promenade). I was so in awe that I forgot to take pictures, but we visited Pigeon Rock the next day (see picture above).  

2.      Achrafieh and Downtown

 

 

                                                   Residential buildings in Achrafieh

For the first two nights of our 4-day stay, we stayed at a hotel in the Achrafieh-district (Royal Tulip Achrafieh), which I had never heard about before.

 But our hotel had a good score on Booking.com. It turned out to be mainly a business hotel, with almost no extra services such as restaurants, but there are plenty of restaurants and cafe's everywhere in the area. Armed with an approximative map of the area found at the hotel, we made our way through small winding streets, lively residential neighborhoods with café's and shops. As we walked down and west, we ended up in a new area with Italian looking renovated streets, lots of mosques but even more churches, until we found the ABC-mall, the place to be on this lovely mild evening. We had a nice dinner outside at once of the terraces and then found bookshop Antoine , ‘the’ bookshop chain of Lebanon, unsurprisingly still open as the ABC-mall is open from 10 am until 10 pm. Here we found an excellent Bradt-guide, published in 2017, which would be very helpful for the coming 3 days, together with a small brochure “Best of Beirut”, that we found somewhere and describes 7 districts to visit, including an up and coming designer district.

Achrafieh and Downtown in pictures:

Achrafieh has a very relaxed and easy going feel to it, compared to some of the more posh areas we would visit the next days. It still has lots of old residential buildings, even if glass-cladded towers are sprouting up between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Downtown in pictures:

 

A mosque and a church next to each other in Downtown

 

inside of a church, Downtown

 

 

Terraces

Italian style renovated streets, downtown

 

2.      Gemmayzeh, Zaituna Bay, Hamra and Raouche

One of the hightlights not far from Achrafieh, is the Gemmayzeh-district, with its famous Sursock-Museum. This mansion, built in 1912 in an ornate Italian/Lebanese style, with very distinctive winding outside staircases, was the former residence of the wealthy fine-art collector Nicolas Sursock. Some of the rooms have been kept in their original state, including Sursock’s former office with dark wood panelled walls, and arched windows with colourful glass panels in neo-Ottoman style, not unusual in the architecture of the early 1900’s. Nowadays, the museum hosts contemporary art exhibitions.

                                Salon area (majlis) in the Sursock-museum. Unfortunately, the detailed colored glass panels in the arches are barely visible today, because there is no light flowing through them anymore (because the garden that used to be behind the building has gone)

                                          

Marble fountain at the entrance of the Sursock museum

                                       

                                     

                                   Villa in neo-ottoman style near the Sursock-museum, now used as a restaurant
 

After a refreshing drink in the quiet garden of the Sursock-museum, we walked towards the sea, passing through downtown, and landed at Zaituna Bay, where we had lunch. Zaituna Bay is a small marina with some restaurants Dubai/Abu Dhabi style in quite a rundown area near the sea.

After our meal, we continued walking along the seaside of the Hamra-district, where I accidentally found the Artisan's center and where the campus of the American University of Beirut touches the seaside (with its own private beach club). The Artisan’s center has anything from bed linen, towels, tableware and jewels, made by artisans. Though not cheap, I found a pair of nice earrings and great design objects for a third the price compared to Dubai.
Lebanon is famous for its contemporary Arabic design, which reinterprets classical themes such as the typical geometrical Arabic patterns. The traditional small wooden coffee tables are not made out of traditional materials such as metal or wood, but instead made in Plexiglas or other new materials, which lends a modern twist to these objects.

                                  
                                       The Artisan's Center on the seafront promenade

Happy with my purchase (an iPad-cover decorated with Arab calligraphy), we kept on walking along the seaside, passing the campus of the American University of Beirut, which consists of a huge park leading down to the sea.

We then took the cab for a short ride to Raouche, one of the favourite hang outs for the Lebanese at sunset. The attraction is the rock called Pigeon Rock, which has a whole in its middle and can be seen on one of the Lebanese Lira notes.

Instead of hopping into one of the boats that take tourists through the whole and back, we walked to the sea level next to it and saw some kind of grotto’s in the rocks that supports the Corniche.

Pigeon rock

 

                                                  Beirut's Corniche {Raouche)

Caves/grottos under Beirut's Corniche

 

3.       Hip and trendy Beirut: National Museum (Badaro-district) and Mar Mikhael ("Designer district")
 

The last 2 nights in Beirut we spent in the trendy Smallville Hotel. It is very close to the National Museum of Beirut.

The museum contains beautiful mosaics, tombs and freezes from Baalbek, Byblos and many other sites. On the groud floor I watched a short film, which shows the damage the museum suffered during the Civil War.

The images are hard to look at. The stately building was no more than a gaping crater. The columns at the entrance were barely standing upright. Luckily, its director had the foresight to encase the larger items such as tombs, statues, friezes and mosaics) in huge concrete cases. Even so, one bombshell percuted a wall of the museum from outside and damaged a part of a mosaic attached to it (the hole in the mosaic is still visible as a testament to the destruction of the war).

Many small objects from Phoenician and Roman times had to be painstakingly restored because they were stocked in the basement, which flooded during the war.

                                   The artefacts in the National Museum give an overview of the different peoples    and civilizations that shaped the country, from the prehistory, through Phoenician, Greek and Roman times to Islamic times

Roman tomb

From the National Museum it is only a short walk to Bourj Hammoud, the location of Beirut's Armenian community.

Gentrification is slowly making its way through this part of Beirut. The so-called “Designer District” is squeezed between the industrial port and the Armenian district. The aerea is also called “Mar Mickael”, because of the Armeanian church nearby (‘Mar” is Armenian for “Saint”).

After much asking around, we finally found the 2 streets that make up the "Designer district". Because a lot of renovation is going on in the area, it is not easy to find.

                                           

 

                                             Street art is everywhere in Beirut

 

 

 

                             Old building in the Designer District. The lower part is conserved, but new upper storeys are added to it in quite a chaotic fashion.

 

The Designer District comprises a handful of fancy boutiques, bookstores and cafes and restaurants.

                                               The trendy little shop 'Pink Henna"

 We ended up in a restaurant called “ Kharouf” (which means lamb in Arabic). The food was delicious. We tried a variety of minced meat served in small clay pots, often prepared with eggs. The other customers consisted of upper-class Lebanese families enjoying the Eid-holiday.

After our meal we walked one km down Armenia Street and ended up in the very busy shopping area with one café surrounded by greenery in the middle of a crazily busting square. This is the heart of “Bourj Hammoud”, the Armenian district of Beirut. The shops around were mainly selling fake Chanel handbags. But as we were sitting on a terrace we noticed the big signs above a butcher store, named Beto. It seemed as if the whole of Beirut came to Beto to get their takeaway Sujuk, Makanek or Shoarma home, but some of them just took it to the terrace and ate it there and then with a soda ordered from the café.
It was a perfect ending to our visit of this multi-faceted city.

Useful guides:

- Bradt-guide "Lebanon", January 2017.
- 'Best of Beirut", excellent little foldable brochure which describes in a detailed way 7 different key districts in Beirut (available for free at the Sursock-Museum).

 

 

Where to stay:

The Smallville Hotel is a recently opened design hotel in the Badaro-district, at a 2-minute walk from the National Museum of Beirut. It has several restaurants, of which an outdoor restaurants with live music on certain evenings. Ask for a room on one of the higher floors ( we stayed on the 12th) for a great view of Beirut.

 

    view by night from our hotel room on the 12th floor in the Smallville hotel