Category Archives: Cool Stuff

A Blue Cruise Along the Turquoise Coast

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My cruise along the Mediterranean coast ended today. The boat left Sunday morning from the Finike harbor and arrived this afternoon at the Fethiye harbor. We actually got transferred from Olympos to Finike by bus but I knew this beforehand so it was not a sour surprise.

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The gullet was a very nice boat called Suleimanbay with 8 cabins and sleeping space for 14. There were only 8 people on the boat the first day, Erin and Ann (Australians living in London), Stanley and Cecile (French), Sebastien and Marilou (French speaking Canadians) and Natalia (South African). A very nice American couple joined us the second day in Kas. Kind of a strange mix at first glance but it all worked out well as there was a lot of room on the boat to keep everybody content without stepping on each other’s toes.

The boat moved from one beautiful spot along the coast to another during the day. It anchored at the harbor on the 2nd night and at a cool spot the rest of the nights.

When the boat anchored at a nice place, a staircase was lowered to the water level. So, I was able to dive from the boat directly in the water and swim around the boat or even to the shore. I could also ask to be taken to shore by boat if there was something nice to see, which usually required some hiking as well.

When the boat was on the move, I socialized with the rest of the passengers, contemplated the amazing view, sunbathed, read a book, or simply slept.

I can remember a lot of cool moments that made this trip memorable.

Every morning, I would wake up, get on the deck and jump right into the water. It was great; I did not even have to walk to the pool or to the beach.

The second evening, we harbored in Kalkan so that the Ausies could see their team loose against Italy in a nice dive at the last minute. After dinner, Natalia and I checked out the little resort town. It is a very nice place built around the harbor.

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On the morning of the third day, we arrived early at a beach located at the end of a valley called the Butterfly valley. Rod had mentioned to me that the place was very nice and I really wanted to check it out. Surprisingly the captain was saying the opposite, not nice, too hot, too far, trying to get us to stay at the boat. However, I had my mind set on going and was ready to swim there even with my shoes on if I needed to. But finally I managed to convince 3 other people to come with me. The captain had no choice but to get us to the shore. I was happy to discover a beautiful white sand beach with not too many constructions on it. The place had a warm feel of community with a garden and a small hotel. The way to the valley was very easy to find and the path was very pretty. It leads you to a lovely waterfall where I took the liberty to shower under it (How cool is that? :)). To add to the magic we were accompanied by beautiful butterflies along the way. Rod was right, the place was just perfect and we had the chance to enjoy it without other people around. Our boat actually left just as the place started to get crowded. The whole setting was amazing and I would not have minded staying there a bit longer. It was definitely better than Olympos. Thinking about it, maybe this is how Olympos used to be when it all started.

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Our next stop was in Olu-Deniz whose lagoon is called the “dead sea” because it is protected by a natural rock formation. After lunch, I swam all the way to the beach with Ann and Erin to check it out. The water was much warmer in the lagoon and the setting was just beautiful. Unfortunately, the beach is fully covered with lounge chairs which is totally the opposite of what we experienced at the Butterfly Valley beach. Still we ended up staying there a bit too long for the taste of the captain who had raised the anchor and was ready to go while we were swimming back. He sent the small boat to get us and we were soon on our way. 

The final stop of the day was in the bay of Saint Nicolas Island. It was a bit disappointing because it was only 3pm and it seemed there wasn’t much to do there. I would have much preferred to have stayed longer in Olu-Deniz. The captain did not give any insight on the history of the island and declined to take us to the shore with the excuse that he was busy working on the anchor system. I guess that might be the reason he left early from Olu-Deniz. To make things worse, it started raining and sadly there was not much to do except dive or swim around the boat. However luck was with us that day as another tour boat anchored close by. It turned out this boat had a water slide on it and we were more than ready to try it out when invited by some Turkish guys. It was quite an experience sliding through the boat which certainly brightened up our day.

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On the last morning of the tour, we anchored close to a nice little beach and I decided to swim to the shore. On my way there, I spotted a small inflatable red ball that was drifting on top of the waves. It turned out some little girls had lost it and the waves and the wind drifted the ball too fast for them to be able to seize it. I caught the ball and took it back to the girls who… immediately lost it again :). So, I caught the ball and brought it back one more time (It was quite a fast ball!). Then I left. It turned out the girls had lost it again while I was on the beach but nobody was there this time to catch it. That little ball just wanted to be free!

Overall the cruise was great. However, some things were disappointing or just plain bad.

The program mentioned that the boat carries water toys like snorkeling gear and a windboard but unfortunately they were not available on board. There was a windboard but it was missing the sail and some other parts so it could only serve as a decoration! The captain on the other hand continuously promised he would buy some snorkeling gear at the next harbor but he never did.

Also, I was hoping to do some water sports at the stops but never managed to. Wave ridding and water skiing are forbidden in many places because there were too many tourists to make it viable, and not offered at all in some other places because there were not enough tourists to make it worthwhile. I was thinking to try paragliding in Olu-Deniz but as I mentioned earlier the captain wanted to take off earlier, so I missed the chance. Gokkaya bay is the only place where water skiing is available, but we arrived there too late because of our delayed departure from Finike. It was already dark when we got there :(. Too bad, it would have been a lot of fun to have tried these things.

The captain never sails the boat. He only uses the engine to direct it. It would have been nice to shut the engines down and just sail, as the wind was definitely strong enough to pull us. I guess I have to rent a boat some time and try it myself ;). 

I lost two towels in two days! Yes, I first forgot my travel towel in Olympos and then the towel I had just bought in Kas fell off the boat during the 2nd night! It must be a sign. I don’t know yet what kind, but without doubt it must be one.

And definitely the worst part was the fact that the captain and the cook made advances on the two Ausies during the first evening. The girls were certainly very upset and did not tell me until the next day. But, because of my experiences in the Middle East, I kind of guessed what might have happened when I saw them agitated that night. Very sleazy indeed!

But all these did not really compromise my enjoyment of the trip and the good definitely outweighed the slight bad. I would do it again any time.

At the end of the cruise it started raining, so I did not feel too bad about leaving the boat. I also have a long journey ahead of me so there is no time to look back yet ;).

Off Tourist Track

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On Sunday I left Syria for Turkey without knowing much about Turkey. I also did not plan beforehand so I have been reading as much as I could in the past few days, especially during the 7-hour bus ride from Beirut. Initially, I had not made up my mind which way to go from Aleppo (Syria). Not wanting to waste my time I just decided to cross the border, go to Antakya (the closest big city formerly known as Antioch) and take advantage of the bus ride to read more and plan the rest of the visit :).

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The border crossing went well. However, there were a lot of trucks crossing the  border so, at one moment, we got stuck in a no-man land in a huge truck-traffic jam until the minibus finally decided to go off-road in order to get through. Visa was not a problem, it is automatic and free for French people.

Once in Antakya, I checked into a hotel but the TV was not broadcasting the World Cup so I decided to go out and find a place to watch the French and the Brasilian teams. This turned out to be not so easy, first because it was Sunday and as I found out, a lot of places in Turkey are closed on Sundays, and second I did not speak any Turkish. I also started realizing that Antakya might not be a place tourists visit much because very few people here speak English and the idea of meeting a French speaker was even more remote.

Yes, leaving Syria and entering Turkey was a bigger event than the other times I have changed countries. Furthermore, the fact that people in Turkey, unlike in Syria and the other countries I visited before, do not speak Arabic and my being comfortable with my limited but very useful Arabic was not of much help in Antakya.

So I had to learn some Turkish. The first thing I learned was “Anlamyorum” (I don’t understand), makes sense, right? :). One advantage of the Turkish language over the Arabic is that Turkish uses the the roman alphabet which they adopted after World War I in place of the Arabic alphabet. So it is easier to learn new words that I see written on the streets, TV, or computers.

What stands out is that people are very friendly and even if they don’t speak English, they are very eager to help. Someone nicely escorted me to a pub after I mentioned “Football”. The owner of the pub received me well and before the game between France and Korea ended, I had befriended the waiter who offered me a map of the region and the city. Watching the games became even more interesting because at the pub I met a few Koreans, who I think might have been the only ones living in that region.

Another word I had to learn early on was “kepati” (which means “closed”) because I arrived in Antakya on a Monday and  I discovered the hard way that, different from the Middle-East, all public monuments are closed on Monday including museums and other points of interest.

Since everything I wanted to visit was kepati, I decided to move West to the city of Adana.  Turkey is a big country and I decided to move West first and am planning on taking the road along the Mediterranean to get closer to Greece where I will be in a week.

Adana is the 4th largest city in Turkey so I thought it would be a nice stop on my way West.

I started having doubts about going there thought, while reading more in the bus, since I realized it was not well documented. However, I had already made the choice so I decided to stick with it and try to get through without any help from the guide book for once. It actually turned out very well. I even decided to stay one more night in order to visit some of the monuments and get a feel for the place :).

In Adana, while I was walking in the streets with my book in hand trying to make sense of the map, people came towards me and offered to help, especially people speaking a little bit of English that seemed eager to practice.

At a very nice museum in Adana, an employee offered to show me around since the material was only presented in Turkish. She was very nice and thorough. Her English was basic but it was enough to get me through, and she refused any tip or payment at the end! The museum has some really nice statues of Greek and Roman gods as well as a fine example of an Achilleus Sarcophagus (similar to the ones in Beirut).

At the Internet cafe, I was befriended by the owner when I started editing my  pictures. He showed me his digital SLR and we talked a bit about music (Big Ramstein and Metallica fan there. And it was dirt cheap too!).

At the hotel, I met Meryem, a Cyprian-Turk lady living in London, and we hung out for some time talking about our lives of expats and a bit about the condition of women in South-East Turkey. For example, she thought it was a bad idea to go out together so we stayed at the hotel.

In general, people have been getting out of their way to help me in the last few days in Antakya and Adana. I think it might be because they are not used to seeing tourists as often and the novelty factor is still high. And believe me, they are not trying to get you to any souvenir shops :).

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At the same time, being a novelty also had some disadvantages as some people would look at me curiously. This was especially the case when I visited a new huge Mosque that was built 8 years ago. I was welcomed gracefully but I got a lot of stares. I guess this is a normal trade-off. For the record, the staring was more out of curiosity rather than animosity and at no point I felt unsafe.

As a matter of fact, I have not seen any other foreign tourist in the last 3 days. Welcome to the “off tourist track”!

La Vie de Chateau (2)

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Yesterday started as well as the day before had finished when we were served a great breakfast of freshly backed croissants, chocolate croissants and baguettes with some cheese, butter and jam (As we had agreed on with the chef the night before).

The idea was actually to stay one more night at the hotel after Mr Kamal had brought to our attention that the best Lebanese wineries were not so far and he could arranged a tasting and lunch at one of them. First, we had to deal with Rod plane tickets since he had booked for early today and we thought we should be back in Beirut the night before his flight. Changing the ticket ended up being a costly option so we thought about other options since we really wanted to go to the winery and staying at the hotel one more night was definitely a nice proposition. Talking with the very helpful reception, we found out that we could get a ride to the airport early today for a very decent price and we would get on time for Rod’s plane if we left at 6:30AM so that solved the issue.

We left for Chateau Kefraya at 1PM and one hour later, we were on the domain. It turned out nobody else was there and we had the cave and restaurant for ourselves.

We first started with a great tasting with the clerk going over all of the chateau’s wines and telling us more about wine in Lebanon and histories of the chateau. We got to taste a large sample of the wines he had. He did not get older than 2000 for the great Red Chateau Kefraya and did not offer any of their top-end Comte d’M though. The top-end having only started recently, it might have been too young anyway.

We then sat up for lunch. The menu was again all in French so I translated some words to Rod. We set for deli meat plate, coq au vin for me and a filet sauce Roquefort for Rod and a cheese plate to finish. And of course, a bottle of red Chateau Kefraya 2000 to accompany the meal! I was very pleased with the whole experienced but Rod did not like his main dish that much. The sauce Roquefort was not very good and the steak was cooked medium while he had requested rare. And they charged us two servings of tapenade while we had not asked for it or told it was not free. (Yes, I can be picky)

The rest of the day went very well with a smooth ride back to the hotel to watch France-Switzerland and Brazil-Croatia and a nice dinner again.

This morning went as planned with a great breakfast again and the added advantage of having Mr Kamal himself driving Rod to the airport and me to Beirut as he had some business to deal with here.

Rod and I parted ways again for the third time in less than a month. He is going to London for some days and down to Spain from there. I am sure we will meet again soon.

All in all, our experience at the Hotel La Memoire has been great. It is a very nice hotel with a lot of charm and a great staff.

For the two days we were there, we were the only guests in the hotel so we had all the staff working for us. At the same time, there were so many of them that it looked a bit curious at times.

If I had to be perfectionist, I would change the dinning outdoor area to wood personally as it is not up to the rest of the furniture. The staff is a bit inexperienced but all the little imprecisions are easily forgotten when you see that they really are enthusiast about working there and doing whatever it takes to help you on any matter. Some little things are not perfect yet but what can you expect after nine days. Having talked quite extensively with Mr Kamal and some members of his staff, everything will get very smooth very soon and Hotel La Memoire is promised to a bright future. If you go to Baalbek, be sure to check it out.

Being able to enjoy the beginning of an hotel like this is quite an experience and I enjoyed it a lot since everybody was so enthusiastic about making our stay comfortable. I hope this enthusiasm does not get lost as time passes and the hotel becomes more famous and more busy. Great memories!

These 3 last days have definitely been different than the rest of my trip. I think I needed to splurge a little bit after traveling kind of rough for the last month. This was perfect! Now, back to normal ;).

La Vie de Chateau

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After Sunday evening’s splurge, we had decided to go back to our normal travel style. The plan was to travel to Baalbek to see the ruins of the ancient Roman city. We hoped on one of the service minibus to Baalbek and were there around 2 hours later.

We only planned to stay one night in Baalbek so we had to check in an hotel and go see the ruins. The first surprise when we arrived was that a lot of construction going on in front of the hotel that seemed best based on Lonely Planet (2003). We still got in and asked for a room. I did not like the rooms because they were quite shabby and it was smelling moldy. Since we were only staying for one night and Rod wanted to get to the ruins fast, we still checked in after the owner had told us it would go away with some aeration.

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We went on to visit the ruins. The ruins are quite compact and it does not take that long to visit them. There are three temples:

  • The main temple was the temple of Jupiter that must have been massive with columns of 20 meters but there is not much left standing today.
  • The second temple and the most impressive is the temple of Bacchus that was called the small temple at that period. It has nothing of small to tell the truth and it is quite well conserved. Very impressive!
  • The third temple is actually not on the main site and cannot be approached. You can see the temple of Venus from 15 meters away when you are outside the main complex. It is not in a very nice shape though.

Construction work of the theatre for the Baalbek festival starting July 13th are going on so it removes a bit of the site. The amphitheatre is located in between the two main temples so it was not preventing us from visiting though.

There are also two museums on site and they should not be missed as they are very nicely documented and present some nice pieces.

The guide and people are raving about Baalbek but I still prefer Jerash for its cheer size and overall conservation and restoration state. Baalbek is not to be missed still and I would advise to visit it over Palmyra if you had to make a choice.

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After visiting the ruins and the nearby cool looking mosque, it was time to get a beer and watch some football so we went around looking for a bar. Experience taught us that your best bet when you are in a smaller town in the Middle-East was to go for the bigger hotels.

And we started with the most famous and actually oldest hotel of Baalbek. The Palmyra hotel is located near the ruins and was considered the best hotel in town by the same Lonely Planet Middle-East. It is a great looking building with a nice garden but the reception was not very friendly. It was not bad but nothing very inviting so we decided to move on and try our luck somewhere else.

We did not really know where to go from there since there was nothing else in the guide. But on the way to Baalbek, we had seen commercials on the side of the road about an hotel called Hotel La Memoire that was not in the guide. And we also had seen an indication of where it was located when we had arrived in town. So we decided to go and check it out. Maybe we would be luckier.

The hotel is not very far from the main road actually but still far enough to be in a calm little street. We climbed the steps of the entrance and made our way to the reception where we were very well greeted by the receptionists. Soon after, the manager showed up and offered to set up a TV so that we could watch the games.

Sadly, the hotel is not serving alcoholic beverages so far so our hopes for beers were a bit shattered. Mr Kamal, the manager, offered us to try a non-alcoholic beer as a welcome drink and this is something you should not refuse in Middle-East.

While we were drinking and some staff was setting up the TV for us. We had a very nice discussion in a mix of French and English about the hotel, Baalbek and the Bekaa Valley in general. It turned out the hotel was only open for 9 days! And since it was still quite new, guests were scarce.

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Mr Kamal then gave us a tour of the hotel. It is a very nice boutique hotel of only 9 rooms. Every room’s door has a very nicely handmade metal cover. There is a VIP suite, a Junior suite with a balcony with a view of the ruins and 7 other rooms with either a king bed or two king single beds. Each of them is richly decorated but not overloaded. Quite modern with touches of ancient. For example, our room had this old chair and ottoman that I wanted to take home with me. Each room comes equipped with at least one plasma TV, A/C, a personal fridge and safe box. The hall and lecture room are richly decorated with ancient furniture. The two outdoor areas are very nice.

I was quite sold to the idea of moving there by then but Mr Kamal was still not there yet. After realizing we had just seen the old Roman temples, he graciously offered to lend us the hotel car with a driver to take us around town to see other sites of interest.

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The very young driver took us to some places. The first one was the site of “the largest stone on earth” that is a stone carved out by the Romans to be used at the temple complex. I am not sure if it is the largest stone on earth but the story of the site that was provided to us by the unofficial guard is quite interesting :).

The driver then drove us around town to the main park and “lake”. It allowed us to realize that Baalbek was actually a big city with 150 000 inhabitants as we would learn later.

As we got back to the hotel, we were both sold for sure and decided to move from the shabby hotel to this great place. I don’t think we will ever regret it.

We first had dinner but since the hotel does not have menus yet, the chef came out of his kitchen and gave us some ideas of what we could get. We went with his suggestions and got served a fine meal. It was not as good as the dinner of the day before but it was definitely good. The waiting staff was clearly inexperienced so service looked a bit hectic at first but nothing bad happened :).

We finished the evening watching Italy-Ghana projected outside on one of the white wind protection placed around the terrace.

Diner de Classe

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While I usually kind of dread dinning out by myself preferring take out in these occasions, one of the advantages of traveling with someone is that eating out becomes a cool proposition. Since Rod and I share a liking for good food and good wine (Rod being better at wine appreciation than me actually!), we decided to try one of the best restaurant of Beirut yesterday evening.

The restaurant we chose is named Al Mijana and was highly recommended by the guide as the best place to splurge in Beirut. Good because it is what we were looking for! We walked the 20 minutes from our hotel to the district where the restaurant is located and started looking for it. It actually was not that easy because the street names are most of the time not indicated in Beirut, in place, you find something like “Rue 52” (for street number 52). We walked around for quite some time trying to guess in which street we were and could not find the restaurant. As often in this case, it was only when we had decided to give up thinking the place did not exist anymore that we finally ran into it.

The first thing that was clear was that even if I had put on my best t-shirt, I was not dressed for the part and we got a chilled reception by the Maitre d’O. We were not asked to leave though as it can happen in some places in France so a good point for the Lebanese. Still, the Maitre d’O did not seem to want to seat us outdoor close to the rest of the patrons at first and it is only when I insisted a bit talking in French that he found us a table there :).

As a side note, as I have noticed since I am here, speaking French does help in Lebanon in general as it is associated with luxury and the elite. For example, menus in fancy restaurants are only provided in Arabic and in French. Also, it is not rare to meet people that only speak French or that speak French and English but that prefer to speak in French. Sorry Rod but this was a good training for you ;).

The rest of the evening went very well with a great service, great Middle-Eastern food, a very good bottle of Chateau Ksara and very yummy fruits at the end. Price was actually OK for the experience.