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My you’ve got a big gun…

Well, can you believe it. As if we didn’t have enough to deal with on the health front right now, turns out Mitchie’s got the measles! He had a high fever all weekend and on Wednesday all of a sudden he was a spotty monster. He’s had his MMR vaccination, but it looks like he’s come down with a mild case of measles nonetheless.

I’m not sure how rigorous they are about vaccinations here so he might have been responsible for spreading contagion far and wide. Afterall, I did take him to the indoor playground at the mall on Saturday, and he’s been at school since Monday…

A little while back I added some photos that Mitchell took with our little point-and-shoot digi. Since then we bought him his own digital camera, but he’s having some probs coming to terms with all the different buttons and the pokey little LCD screen on the back. Seems he’s much more comfortable with our snapper, as you can see here.

Mind you, these are the pick of the bunch - the last one is much more typical of his work, although in his defence the camera lens is right where his hand naturally rests.

As you may have already deduced from earlier posts, Lebanon is full of old stuff.  Much of it is poorly preserved or else some new horrible concrete monstrosity has been built over the top of it.

But just occasionally, the odd historical gem has been left in good condition.  Two such examples are Baalbek and Aanjar, both of which are in the Bekaa valley.

Aanjar

Aanjar is often cited as the only real remaining Umayyad site in Lebanon - a remnant of the 7th and 8th century Muslim caliphate. The area was only rediscovered in 1939 after several thousand Armenian refugees settled there, with excavations commencing ten years later.

Walking along the main street of this walled town you get a real feel for what life might have been like back then. Hundreds of shops are clearly visible, as are the bathhouses, mosques and two palaces. It’s history that you can reach out and touch. And as is so typical of historical sites in Lebanon, on any given day you’ll have the place all to yourself. Certainly Christopher and I did, on a glorious autumnal day.

Baalbek

Baalbek is widely considered as a Roman ruin, but the Romans merely expanded and improved upon a much older site focused on hedonism and the worship of the Sun God. Baalbek is the home of the original Bacchanalian feast, with ritualised prostitution and other pleasures of the flesh and soul. Oh, and the odd bit of human sacrifice too.

Upon first arriving in the town of Baalbek you have to fight your way through a horde of annoyingly persistent street hawkers trying to flog off Hizballah t-shirts and crappy postcards, as well as a bunch of ratty kids offering to watch over your parked car (as if anyone’s going to break into your car in the middle of Hizballah territory - you could leave the keys in the ignition and no one would flog your ride).

Then eventually you get into the site, and WHAM, you’re confronted by the sheer scale of this place. There are a bunch of different parts to the complex but the most impressive are the six remaining columns from the old Temple of Jupiter, and the almost complete Temple of Bacchus. The columns of both tower above you and it really is quite amazing to stand at the base of these monsters and look up at the capitals 40-50 metres above you.

Needless to say, the photos below just don’t convey how big these temples are.

Mitchell having some unprompted fun with Mummy’s wheels at City Mall.

With Christopher in town for a few days, he and I decided to have a boys weekend away. Sadly, the girly bars and super nightclubs of Beirut were off-limits, so instead we opted for the historical choice and drove over to Damascus.

Supposedly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world (Byblos, Aleppo and several other cities also make this claim), Damascus has a fantastic old city complete with winding narrow alleys, beautifully preserved mosques, traditional cafes and tastefully renovated Damascene palaces.

We opted to stay in the Beit Joury hotel, a 300 year old palace which had only been converted into a boutique hotel last year. The hotel was in the centre of the Christian quarter and an easy walk to all the main historical sights. From there we wandered leisurely, munching on a falafel roll (very tasty, but not quite as good as my favourite, Sahyoun, on the old Green line), scoffing down a monstrous cone of vanilla icecream covered in pistachio nuts from Bakdash, then later on sitting and whiling away an hour over some sweet black tea and a nargileh pipe.