Boom, boom, boom. Went the beat of the bass. Room is under the 6th floor rooftop bar. It’s gone midnight. Victor Meldrew rings reception to complain about the noise as he has to be up early. Another room upgrade on top of the upgrade given at check-in. Shift my gear with the Night Manager who rings the new room’s doorbell, “Just to make sure”. Reminds me of the time when working on a hotel project in Frankfurt. The Hotel Technician had a Martini pass (anytime, any place, anywhere…for younger readers born after 1985) and showing us different room types. Ringing bell on each occasion just to make sure reception had given him vacant room numbers. We all piled into one room after no response from the door bell. The Hotel Technician. The Architect. The Structural Engineer. The M&E Engineer. Me. And quickly made a quick exit as we interrupted a couple getting acquainted on the bed. The schoolboy in us all left giggling at the Hotel Technician’s error.
Woken at 0600hrs by the hotel alarm clock.
It’s unplugged sharpish to shut it up. It continues. It has to be the only hotel in the world that’s inserted back-up batteries. They’re prised out. Silence.
Day trip to the “countryside” north of Beirut. Told the tower blocks along the mountainside and sea stretch all the way from Israel to Syria. There’s no separation between cities, towns and suburbs. It all blends into one continuous strip of shops, restaurants, hotels, tower blocks. Only 25mins to Jeita Grotto as we turn off the main dual carriageway that slinks snake like along the coast all the way to Syria. Once above the tower block line head into the interior. Like Cyprus’ Troodos Mountains as we climb up. Deep gorges with Cedar trees clinging to the sides. Driving around hair pin bends is pot luck as to whether we have a head on collision or not.
Jeita surprisingly busy at this early hour – mainly buses of Bangladeshi blokes.
Cable car to the Upper Grotto is abnormal in that it doesn’t follow a loop. Instead it goes one way. Then reverses. In a gondola with a Nun and her Mum.
There are two caverns. Upper is the first stop and there’s a big fuss about no photos and having to leave cameras and phones in lockers. When challenged tell security I have neither. I have big pockets. Full of concealed technology I enter.
Wow, wow, wow. Not often is my breath taken away but this is spectacular. Flabbergasted by the enormity and scale of it. Super sized space larger than anything I’ve witnessed before. All carefully lit, it’s a photographer’s paradise. Except you can’t take photos. More voluminous than any cathedral. A walkway wends its way through the vast hall. Plenty of large scale stalagmites and stalagtites and associated formations. It’s like tripe dripping Dali-esque over the rocks in places.
One column looks like jellyfish in a vertical synchronised swim. Words cannot describe what I see. You’ll have to add to your bucket list. Climbing a good few flights of stairs to reach an upper level I feel I’ve not gained any height it’s that vast. Quite, quite spectacular.
A road train takes you to the Lower grotto – the sort kids get at Skegness. Totally different experience. There’s an underground lake and an electric boat glides silently through the ice cold water. Uplit with blue and amber light (202 & 135 by the looks of things fellow lighting designers). The blue lights are in the water, projecting shimmering onto the cavern’s roof. Seem to glide effortlessly for quite some way before returning to the landing stage.
Short drive to Harissa. Take the Teleferique to the top along with a short funicular ride to see Our Lady of Lebanon that sits atop a mountain about 2,000ft up.
Cracking views of the coast line and you realise how much development there is stretching from Israel to Syria.
An interesting winery tour that lasts 2hrs culminating in the requisite wine tasting. Shown where they are also producing Arak. An aniseed firewater that a colleague and I once over indulged in whilst working in Jordan. I know you’re reading this and my thoughts are with you…..how bad we felt for the next two days! Their cellars date back to the 1930s and they retain 500 bottles of each vintage behind a locked door laden with spiders’ webs. It’s like something you would see off the Pirates of the Caribbean. Taste seven wines. I’ve drunk better and the oldest vintage we try is 1977 – which reminds me of the Del-boy Trotter scene along the lines of…….”I’ll have the Beaujolais…….er…..the ’77 vintage…”
Receive a text telling that two Turkish Airline pilots have just been kidnapped in Beirut…..
Driver confirms it’s Hizbollah and goes on to say that they’ve only done it as the Turks will have detained a Hizbollah person and they want a swap. He explains that Hizbollah know where people are and that if they want you they’ll kidnap you in your hotel. Jolly good. Well that’s another sleepless night sorted then.
Dropped off at the ancient town of Byblos and agree to meet driver on the other side. It’s a small port protected by a Crusader castle. It’s a nice place and wish I had slightly more time to explore and that it wasn’t quite so hot even in the late afternoon sun. The St John the Baptist church has a gang of lads preparing the church for a wedding with PA, lighting and flowers down the aisle. Must be the first church I’ve been in that’s air-conditioned.
Slow going on the return to Beirut in Friday night traffic and receive two texts. One from the Ministry of Tourism and one from the British Embassy “Welcome to Lebanon. British national? In emergency call +961 1 960 800”. Quite how they got my number I’ll never know. Do Hizbollah have it as well??
The only photo I could take at Jeita Grotto
Teleferique to Our Lady
Teleferique to Harissa – right to the top
Still going up
Our Lady
