Road trip Lebanon [continued]

Baalbek

We were already quite tired by the time we got there. There were just a few shops selling touristy junk and trinkets. There was no big crowd, no tour buses. There was no magnificent entrance, or indeed anything that might have suggested that it we were about to see something quite as epic as the temples of Baalbek. There was simply a ticket gate with a few old men hanging out inside, where we bought our ticket, and (after brief persuasion) hired our guide.

I don't even know how to begin describing this place. Anything I write or say, or even the pictures, will just be a gross understatement of how incredibly magnificent the experience was. Seeing this majestic site that was built over 2000 years ago and still standing, the grandeur of the structures, the intricacies of the detailed carving in the stones, the height of the pillars still standing and the width of those that have toppled down...we would have been overwhelmed if we weren't trying so hard to decipher our guide's heavily accented and speed-of-light explanations of the various columns and corners of the place.

It also amazed me how much our guide (and historians) knew about this place, how it was supposed to look, how things were built, where things were supposed to be, the purposes of each nook and cranny, and what happened when and where. The only thing they couldn't figure out was how people back then managed to move stones so bloody huge that even machines today can't move.

The Temple of Bacchus

We took more time than the taxi driver Jaad had wanted us to take, but I still felt like it wasn't enough. I wanted to stay longer and almost take pictures of every stone and pillar and carving.

We were treated to more coffee and a tour of this tiny shop that was filled with metal trinketty stuff and "artefacts" from the site, where we politely peered around and backed away with the pretense that we were poor students. We treated Jaad to a coffee for making him wait so long for us, and to ensure he was awake enough to drive us safely back to Beirut.

Baalbek is definitely definitely definitely a must-see when one visits Lebanon. I think I can do this 5 times more and not be sick of it.