Tripoli & the Cedars

Marhaba, (Hi, hello)
I walk around downtown Beirut on Tuesday night. There are around 20,000 people packed into one square mile. People around the world love their soccer. It doesn't matter who is playong. The crowd roars everytime someone kicks the ball. I'm walking around with one of the LAU students Bilal. He is a fan of Germany, and for 115 minutes he had a good time. There is nowhere to sit so we keep walking. We stop at the liquor store and pick up a couple of 40s of Almaza (the local beer). We pay a grand total of $2.50 for two almazas. We keep walking. My Palestinian friend from the beach sees me, and we talk for a little while. Italy eventually wins. Bilal is upset, but I'm not. The women in Lebanon love Italy. This should make for a great time downtown on Sunday.

I kind of went nuts with the pictures this time, but there were a lot of pictures from Tripoli and the Cedars. We started out in Tripoli, which is a city from around 2,000 BCE. The city has a lot of history, and is much more conservative (women in the coverings is much more common in Tripoli than Beirut) and poorer than Beirut. There are several pictures (at the top) of the entire city and also some of a Crusader castle built around the year 1250 CE. It was used by each conquering empire since and today is the largest preserved castle in Lebanon. We toured the prison, stables, and inner defenses. One picture you see is of a cannon from the Ottoman period. The cannon is pointed directly at a mosque. You can't make this stuff up.

We then toured the market area. They have a very famous soap company, so we took a tour of the factory. You can see pictures of soap that looks like writing from the Quran and there is also a picture of the former (now deceased) prime minister who was killed by a car bomb around a year and a half ago.

After leaving Tripoli we began to head towards the cedars. As we got closer to the cedars, we could see the military presence increasing. This is because the cedars is somewhat close to the Syrian border, and there are also a lot of wealthy ski resorts in the cedars. You can see a few of the military pictures. We also stopped at the Khalil Gibraan museum and gravesite. And there was also an ancient Phoenician gravesite. The gravesite could have been from as early as 1,200 BCE. From there we visited the cedars of Lebanon. "The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted." (Psalm 104:16) Unfortunately the cedars are almost entirely gone. (See America isn't the only country that can destroy the environment). The next day we went on a hike and enjoyed the scenery before heading back. Well, if you've made it all the way here I'm very impressed. I would have stopped reading a while ago. I leave for Syria tommorrow and I'll be back on Sunday. I'll post when I get back.

Josh

PS I can only load five pictures per blog, so I'll have to do some other blogs of just pictures.