Last night, our last night in Byblos, had one of the most beautiful sunsets yet, a fierce red sun sinking from thick clouds into a sea the colour of black ice as it began to rain. It was time to leave, and this morning we got a car to take us to Beirut and then drive us to Baalbek for our last stop before leaving the country. In Beirut we collected our passports from the General Directorate of General Security, a matter of about 3 minutes (phew), and then headed east. Over Mount Lebanon, leaving the traffic behind to bare brown mountains which suddenly fell hundreds of metres to the green Bekaa Valley and beyond it the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. Baalbek is in the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountains and just beyond the ridges lies Syria. The military is everywhere, with checkpoints and soldiers and a tank parked outside the entrance to our hotel. The hotel itself is the annex to the Hotel Palmyra, one of the grand old hotels of the Mediterranean, once host to Jean Cocteau, Kaiser Wilhelm, etc. It’s a beautiful place, with a salon set with ancient leather coverd sofas and tasteful antiquities. We had our lunch in the courtyard, where being a thousand metres above sea level meant it was pleasantly cool in the shade, even in mid-afternoon, and we got to try the local speciality, sfeira. Outside the hotel, from our bedroom window, are the antiquities of Baalbeck, a truly awe inspiring scene, with tall Roman columns rising just across the road.
After lunch we strolled down to the market for the other Baalbek speciality, nammoura with cheese, which turned out to be very sweet but tasty semolina halwa with crisp edges and a filling of a fresh cheese. This inland city has a very different feel from the coastal areas. It’s far less European, certainly, and though Baalbek is a wonder of the world, they don’t get all that many visitors, and certainly it is a troubled part of the country.
Our evening was spent in the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus. They were awe inspiring. The former, the largest of its kind, the latter, the best preserved, and what awe and wonder the Romans hoped to evoke is still there in the tall columns and massive stones scattered about the ground. Tomorrow we will go back and look for the megaliths of Baalbeck. But for now we are back at the hotel which we have to ourselves, sipping coffee in the salon.