South from Beirut today to visit the ancient cities of Sidon and Tyre. Conveniently it is 40 kms to Sidon and then another 40 kms on to Tyre. The route is down the coastal highway. This is a well paved though very busy road, not a motorway as we would understand but by Lebanese standards pretty good.
Sidon is Lebanon's third largest city and its name means fishing-town. You come off the highway and approach the town along the promenade fronted by a fine sandy beach as you can see below.
This picture shows rather well the way that the Crusaders used the exsisting Roman columns. The local rock is a rather soft sandstone but by bracing it with the granite columns, the castle could resist not only attack but also several earthquakes over the centuries.
For those of you for whom the Book of Genesis has some relevance the following information may be of interest. Sidon was the first born son of Canaan, the son of Ham, thereby making Sidon the great grandson of Noah. Moving on to lower things, the souk area was across the road from the castle in the sea, so this was our next port of call. This was a fascinating market area both inside and out. Outside was mainly food, with butchers, fishmongers, fruit and vegetable stalls interspersed with car repair workshops. Inside you could buy clothing, jewellery, hats, shoes and pretty well anything else you can think of.
This elegant house is above the famous Soap museum. Beaten into third place by the Keswick Pencil museum and the Rekyjavik Penis museum for the world's most fascinating single subject museum, this place still manages to pull the punters in. It is based in a C17 soap factory although parts of the building date to the C13. The museum was set up by the Audi Foundation (Lebanese political and banking family, not the German car makers). Audi, a former President lived in the house in the picture. The museum has a mission of health education as well as to sell olive oil based soaps.
We didn't visit the St Louis land castle, which was built by French Crusaders in the C13, because it was closed for restoration. I do hope that they don't overdo this one.
We drove on towards Tyre. The highway ran out and we swung east on a rather inferior road. The numbers of military checkpoints seem to increase and the amount of political propaganda was proliferating. We have now entered Hezbollah controlled territory. Descrection being the better part of valour and the fact that we are heading towards the Isreali border influenced our decision to turn around and make for the coast again.
We eventually arrive in Tyre and park up near the harbour on the peninsula. See the photo above. Tyre is 12 miles from the modern border with Isreal and 25 miles from the Syrian border so we getting into a conflict zone.
On the harbour headland is the Maronite Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Sea where we enjoyed a shady walk around. On leaving the church we chanced to bump into another UK tourist. After a brief conversation he turned out to be Paul, the barista from the Tearoom in the Woods, Woodall Spa. Small world! Paul was travelling alone and had come down from Beirut that day on the dolmus. His friends from Woodhall didn't expect him to return either. Best of luck Paul, we'll look you up next time we are in Woodhall Spa.
The chapels that you are looking at above are built into the ruins discovered during excavations in the western courtyard of the church. The chapels are completely out of historical context. The stones you can see are from the Hellenistic period ie 300 to 400 BCE, well before the birth of Christ or the Maronite Church. I'm not sure what the church is up to building these chapels.
This is the west side of the peninsula with a small rocky swimming area. Tyre is another UNESCO world heritage site, mainly because of the superb Roman remains. There are also remains from the Phoenician, Greek and Crusader periods. Back to the Roman stuff, Tyre has the largest surviving hippodrome in the world and probably the second best overall remains, beaten only by Baalbek which is another Lebanese world heritage site.
Time unfortunately didn't allow us to see much of Tyre's Roman heritage and nothing at all of Baalbek.
The journey back to Beirut was more stop than start but we did eventually reach the hotel for our last night in Lebanon. A number of factors beyond our control conspired to delay our journey to the airport, return of the hire car, the checking in process and, the last straw, passport exit control. The end result was we missed our plane. We did however manage to book onto a Middle East Airlines flight which could take us out eight hours later. As of the present time we are still in dispute with Cyprus Airlines.
Sidon is Lebanon's third largest city and its name means fishing-town. You come off the highway and approach the town along the promenade fronted by a fine sandy beach as you can see below.
Here we are paying for parking and tickets to the castle, but look carefully at the two little messages of peace on the kiosk.
The castle is built on and from an old Phoenician temple on top of which is a Roman temple. Got that? Just to complicate the issue archeologists think that the whole lot was built on top of a palace.
This picture shows rather well the way that the Crusaders used the exsisting Roman columns. The local rock is a rather soft sandstone but by bracing it with the granite columns, the castle could resist not only attack but also several earthquakes over the centuries.
For those of you for whom the Book of Genesis has some relevance the following information may be of interest. Sidon was the first born son of Canaan, the son of Ham, thereby making Sidon the great grandson of Noah. Moving on to lower things, the souk area was across the road from the castle in the sea, so this was our next port of call. This was a fascinating market area both inside and out. Outside was mainly food, with butchers, fishmongers, fruit and vegetable stalls interspersed with car repair workshops. Inside you could buy clothing, jewellery, hats, shoes and pretty well anything else you can think of.
This elegant house is above the famous Soap museum. Beaten into third place by the Keswick Pencil museum and the Rekyjavik Penis museum for the world's most fascinating single subject museum, this place still manages to pull the punters in. It is based in a C17 soap factory although parts of the building date to the C13. The museum was set up by the Audi Foundation (Lebanese political and banking family, not the German car makers). Audi, a former President lived in the house in the picture. The museum has a mission of health education as well as to sell olive oil based soaps.
We didn't visit the St Louis land castle, which was built by French Crusaders in the C13, because it was closed for restoration. I do hope that they don't overdo this one.
We drove on towards Tyre. The highway ran out and we swung east on a rather inferior road. The numbers of military checkpoints seem to increase and the amount of political propaganda was proliferating. We have now entered Hezbollah controlled territory. Descrection being the better part of valour and the fact that we are heading towards the Isreali border influenced our decision to turn around and make for the coast again.
We eventually arrive in Tyre and park up near the harbour on the peninsula. See the photo above. Tyre is 12 miles from the modern border with Isreal and 25 miles from the Syrian border so we getting into a conflict zone.
On the harbour headland is the Maronite Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Sea where we enjoyed a shady walk around. On leaving the church we chanced to bump into another UK tourist. After a brief conversation he turned out to be Paul, the barista from the Tearoom in the Woods, Woodall Spa. Small world! Paul was travelling alone and had come down from Beirut that day on the dolmus. His friends from Woodhall didn't expect him to return either. Best of luck Paul, we'll look you up next time we are in Woodhall Spa.
The chapels that you are looking at above are built into the ruins discovered during excavations in the western courtyard of the church. The chapels are completely out of historical context. The stones you can see are from the Hellenistic period ie 300 to 400 BCE, well before the birth of Christ or the Maronite Church. I'm not sure what the church is up to building these chapels.
This is the west side of the peninsula with a small rocky swimming area. Tyre is another UNESCO world heritage site, mainly because of the superb Roman remains. There are also remains from the Phoenician, Greek and Crusader periods. Back to the Roman stuff, Tyre has the largest surviving hippodrome in the world and probably the second best overall remains, beaten only by Baalbek which is another Lebanese world heritage site.
Time unfortunately didn't allow us to see much of Tyre's Roman heritage and nothing at all of Baalbek.
The journey back to Beirut was more stop than start but we did eventually reach the hotel for our last night in Lebanon. A number of factors beyond our control conspired to delay our journey to the airport, return of the hire car, the checking in process and, the last straw, passport exit control. The end result was we missed our plane. We did however manage to book onto a Middle East Airlines flight which could take us out eight hours later. As of the present time we are still in dispute with Cyprus Airlines.
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