Baalbeck & Anjar

Just wanted to reassure you that I am actually here, I didn't decide to go to China instead, and it's not a stranger posting on my blog...

Baalbeck is in the Bekaa Valley, between the two mountain ranges (Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon), and is a Shiite area with a lot of support for Hezbollah. I managed to resist buying a Hezbollah T-shirt or flag, but some of the guys bought shirts and said they planned to wear them to parties back home.

They say Baalbeck was huge during the Roman occupation because of the temple complex to Jupiter, or Baal (I hope I'm getting that right), but now it is just a small tourist town. I think the ruins themselves might be bigger than the town! Admittedly I've never been to a ruined Roman temple before, but I can't imagine anything much bigger. They said these are the largest and best preserved ruins in the world, at least of a Roman temple. I was expecting to walk around and look at some isolated arches, but you climb up some steps and you are in the old temple, and you don't get out of it again for about an hour. I was greedily snapping pictures of the different carvings. They were still working on it for about 300 years, and never finished, so the style kind of evolved.


Here's a shot of some Latin graffiti!

After that we went to Anjar, where there's a ruined shopping mall. It's been somewhat reconstructed. Not nearly as amazing as Baalbeck, but still neat! They had a working drainage system, a palace, and a mosque with a covered cistern next to it (no longer covered).

Then, oh then, we went to Al-Shams restaurant in Zahle, which is the capital of the region. We were there a long time, while the waiters, with no unnecessary ceremony, loaded the table with mezze (appetizers) and plates heaped with kebabs and fruit. Yikes! They had great taste in music, too. (Here you see Farha smoking arguileh while eating. Next to her is my teacher Rima, in the headscarf.) Finally we trundled ourselves back out to the bus and returned to Hamra.