Lebanon Reviews
Summer travels in the land of milk & honey
Tracey Collins & Eric Adams, August 2011
Eric and I love Lebanon! It really is the "land of milk and honey," and our journey has just begun. Thanks so much for paying attention to the little details. Our room in the LeGray Hotel is fabulous. We love the personal touch of the staff and breakfast was great this morning. I had the best Blueberry pancakes! Yummy...
After that, we met our tour guide Pauline in the lobby and our driver Eddie. Pauline and Eddie are great. Eric and I feel safe and comfortable with them, and that is important. Pauline is a very smart tour guide. She's authentically knowledgeable and gentle. I see why you selected her as our tour guide. Pauline, sends you her kind regards. Eddie is a prompt, pleasant driver and we feel safe in the vehicle with him. We really appreciate the quality of the interaction with our tour guide and driver, it makes the trip more enjoyable. These things are important, because we spend so much time with tour guides and drivers, when we travel abroad.
Jeitta Grottoes was quite interesting today, especially the lower level. We are on our way to have dinner in Gemayzeh this evening, and we are looking forward to our journey tomorrow beginning with the Chouf Mountains.
We just arrived in our room at the at Byblos Sur Mer Hotel. It is quite lovely. The sea view in our room is breathtaking. We will encourage our friends to visit Lebanon too.
Lebanon
Mr Charlie Caminada, May 2011
Beirut incredible. All arrangements went like clockwork. Lovely weather after the first day (a bit cloudy). Le Gray Hotel superb – the concierge Lisa, the find of the century! Food, everything extremely good, even if not the cheapest at the hotel - £100 for a (terrific) steak and bottle of wine. But extremely comfortable rooms, expensive bed linen and first class service throughout the hotel with staff who remembered every detail of what you liked (how my martini had to be mixed!) and could simply not do enough.
The guide and driver we had for three days were excellent (Pauline guide – very knowledgeable - and Eddie the driver who was efficiently good with the pedal). As I only ever recall, the Lebanese are such lovely people and the food excellent everywhere (except in the kitchens of BMI for the flight home!) The Casablanca was the best restaurant we went to but very hard to find.
Remarkable what has and is being done to transform downtown Beirut which was destroyed in the '75-'90 Civil War. The PM they assassinated in 2005 (Rafik Hariri) set up Solidere to effectively buy up the 400 acre downtown area which, putting aside the corruption involved, has led to superb, faithful development and with every conceivable big brand name shop. One thing everyone must do is the 4 hour walking tour with Ronnie who runs Walk Beirut and who Lisa at the hotel put us in touch with - fascinating.
The country is desperate for more tourism, many people actually thanking us for coming and asking if we'd ever come back! To which we replied "yes, we will". Baalbeck itself, that is to say the ruins themselves, are as extraordinary as ever but all the years of corruption and conflict meant no one stood in the way to stop a lot of appalling cheap building construction almost right up to the ruins. Which you are allowed to walk all over to this day without anything roped off to protect it.
The country is amazing in many ways even if perhaps I am biased on account of living there for 5 years in the 60s.
Thank you for the bottle of very good wine when we arrived and the vouchers when we got home yesterday.