Lebanon: The Roman and the Fragrant

After our jaunt in Petra, we parted ways with Brittany and flew to Lebanon. We met up with our lovely friends, Spot and Pimily, whom we hadn't seen in about 1.5 year but whom we immediately recognized in the airport because of the sign they held up for our benefit, which said, "Bags, Ho."

We were relieved — to have reprieve from our taxi-driver travails, to be in the company of Arabic speakers and to be able to wash our stinky clothing.

Cot & Lem took us to their home, a small apartment in a neighborhood that had children playing in the street and butchers gutting sheep, also in the street.

Their electricity went out several times, and despite the constant cloud of mosquitoes, we opened the windows as we slept. In the choice of drowning in a pool of sweat or being eaten alive by mosquitoes during the night, we chose the latter.

That's why, as you'll see, Erin woke up the first morning with her eye fused shut and her face swollen. When the swelling came down a bit, we could see that the culprit had not been Flemily's fist in the middle of the night, but a mosquito that had bitten Erin's eyelid.

So if you think she's being fresh and winking at you in some of the following photos, I'm sorry to have to dash that thought to shreds.

Because of the elections that weekend, we had to fit our big sightseeing trips into the first few days. First we went to Baalbek, an enormous and well-preserved complex of temples constructed for Jupiter (Zeus), Venus (Aphrodite), Mercury and Bacchus. The area is thus named in pre-Roman times by the Phoenicians for their god Baal, who is mentioned many times in the Old Testament (here is a great example).
Limiline took a much better panoramic shot of Baalbek that I'll post as soon as I can get to it.

We may get older, and we may move away to different places, but we're still as silly as we were 20 years ago.

Take a moment and marvel at how talented my husband is. Also, to the right is Herculean Erin, who does not let a vision-impairing mosquito bite keep her at home.

The Lebanese countryside. One of the key ways that Lebanon differs from Egypt and Jordan is its greenness. We saw grass in Lebanon! I wanted to rub my face in it. At this point, we had either pulled over to take in the verdant beauty or I'd forced Spock to pull over because I felt pukey from his crazy driving.

The next day we took another long, winding drive to see the Lebanese cedars of Biblical fame. It was a nice, cool escape from the hot, arid climate we'd experienced thus far in our journey. The cedars, however, are suffering in Lebanon. They've been "exploited" to the point that there are few cedar forests in the country, despite the cedar being the national symbol, right smack dab on their flag.

So what do we do? Support the exploitation of cedars by purchasing some cedar souvenirs! A girl in the shop we went to personalized a wood carving and ornament we bought by writing Bible verses upon the fragrant wood with a smoldering, red-hot thingamajig.

Erin, Flem and I found Word Warp to be a necessary diversion in almost every spare moment. Erin, who brought her iPhone over on the trip, found herself constantly having to charge it because of our shared obsession (Wade and I have since downloaded the game to his iPod Touch and play it nightly).

Next: The Horror, Oh the Horror, of the Elections