I have been enjoying Beirut and its surrounding area for the last 3 days.

When I was not walking around town looking for streets that do not exist anymore, trying 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.

Without any doubts, the highlights have been the National Museum and the Jeita Grotto.  

National Museum

The National Museum of Beirut is one of the 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 ingenious systems and hard work of the museum staff. The whole story of how the collections were protected during the war and how the museum was restored and reopened are actually presented in a very nice 15 minutes movie. 

The museum is very well organized and documented (in Arabic, French and English). The 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.

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”

For an overview of the collections, you can look at their website that is very well done too! 

Jeita Grotto

I visited the Jeita Grotto (Caves of Jeita) yesterday. It is very close to Beirut so you can visit it as a half-day trip from there. The only bad thing about them is that the company that exploits them is actually trying to create some sort of an attraction park there and as a consequence, it is quite expensive to get in.

But once you get into the caves you forget about it as the caves are 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 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.

Both the museum and the caves did not allow taking pictures so you will have to check the respective websites to get an idea of what it looks like. 

I am now in Aleppo (Helab) back to Syria after a 7-hour bus ride. No incidents except for avery nice Syrian border immigration agent that was not happy with the performance of the French football team! He still let me through without any hassle though, Ouf :).