After a good night’s sleep, we had an early start for a coach trip to Baalbeck, Lebanon’s greatest Roman treasure, and supposedly one of the best preserved Roman temples ever as it was buried in metres of sand.
On the way to Baalbeck, we stopped at a village and had the speciality breakfast of cream cheese and honey wrapped in a pancake, made in the traditional way. Not quite sure whether we liked it or not, but the coffee was good!
After that it was all back on the bus, and next stop was an old quarry site where the largest hewn stone in the world lies where it was cut 2000 years ago. It makes you realise just how ambitious the Roman’s were with their building projects to think that they could move stones of this size, 21.5m x 4.8m x 4.2m – I suppose they had plenty of slaves, and they didn’t care how long it took because they thought that their civilisation was going to be around forever.
Next it was on to Baalbeck, and the site was all that the literature promised and more, very impressive. However, what we didn’t expect were the fairly aggressive street sellers outside the temples, pushing Hezbollah tee-shirts in our faces. Some friends thought about buying one as a gift for our Israeli hosts in the next port, but thankfully decided against it! It wasn’t until we returned to the marina that the girl in the office told us that normal Lebanese people consider the Baalbeck region to be unsafe as it is a Hezbollah stronghold. Oh well, we survived it, the only casualty of the trip was the coach, which lost the door to the boot in an altercation with a raised curb!
After lunch we were all trooped into a winery, where we were shown the cellars carved into the rock, and then invited to sample the produce. The stuff they gave us was of dubious quality, but we were assured that the more expensive wines were highly sought after. I think a few of the party fell for it, and the coach party chinked and clinked to the sound of rattling wine bottles all the way home!
Brian – not impressed with the Lebanese red (although he did manage to finish it!).
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