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© SAIGA Tours
Start
Jun 8, 2022
Beirut
Beirut
2022-06-08
End
Jun 13, 2022
Beirut
Beirut
2022-06-13
Duration
6 days
Price
US$695.00
TOUR OVERVIEW
A lot comes to mind when you think of Lebanon: chaos, beauty, excitement, and sadness just to name a few. This extremely small country has a big story to tell and doesn’t disappoint. We’ll base ourselves in Beirut for the entire tour, using this amazing, vibrant city as base from which to explore the rest of the country, from north to south, ancient to modern, and an eclectic mix of things in between.
INCLUSIONS:
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✓ |
Accommodation in twin share at roughly 3 star hotels/guesthouses, breakfast included |
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✓ |
Transport, beginning and ending in Beirut |
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✓ |
Entrance fees to all sites mentioned in the itinerary |
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✓ |
SAIGA guide and local guides |
SINGLE SUPPLEMENT: $150
EXCLUSIONS:
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⨯ |
Meals other than breakfast |
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⨯ |
Transport to and from Beirut |
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⨯ |
Accommodation and any other services before or after the tour |
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Personal expenses such as souvenirs or any optional activities |
TOUR HIGHLIGHTS
Explore cosmopolitan exciting Beirut
See the Hezbollah Museum first hand
Urban explaration at its best - the abandoned World Fair Site in Tripoli
Get a photo with Saddam Hussein at the Hall of Fame Museum
Day 1Wed Jun 8
Beirut, Tripoli, World Fair Site, Byblos, Microbrewery
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We will meet this morning at 9am to begin our exciting trip to some of Lebanon’s more interesting and unusual sites.
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We’ll start off with a drive up the north coast of Lebanon. Our first stop is the
Tripoli International Fair Site
. In 1963, the famous brutalist architect Oscar Niemeyer was commission to design a complex for a World Expo. Unfortunately, construction was interrupted by the Lebanese Civil War and the project remaine
d unfinished and since then it has been left to decay. The fair grounds present us with an awesome opportunity to explore some amazing, abandoned brutalist architecture. We’ll then head into the centre of Tripoli to take a walk around and get some lunch.
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On the way back south, we’ll stop in at the famous ancient city of Byblos. Many believe Byblos is the oldest city in the entire world, with it first being inhabited between 8800 and 7000 BC! Over the course of its existence, Byblos has seen ma
ny of the world’s empires come and go, including the Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman and Ottoman just to name a few.
- One last stop, this time at a microbrewery! “A microbrewery in Lebanon?” you’re thinking… Opened in 2014, this local watering hole offers some unique drops made on site. Filled with young and hip Lebanese, we’ll stop by to have a drink. For those who didn’t get enough abandoned buildings in Tripoli, there is a never-finished aquarium right next door.
Day 2Thu Jun 9
Hezbollah Museum, Al Khiam Prison
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Today we’ll head in the opposite direction and drive south, first to the port city of Sidon, another town which claims to be the oldest in the world. Here we’ll stop to get permits to head to the south. This is the only way to get these permits, they don’t issue them in advance, but it in itself is a pretty unique and interesting experience!
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We’ll then head to the famous Hezbollah Resistance Museum. This open-air museum was built on one of the sites of battles they fought against Israeli soldiers. This theme park/propaganda museum is surprisingly tasteful and shows both the lives of soldiers as well as the politics behind the deadly confrontations.
It is due to Hezbollah that Israeli forces retreated from this part of southern Lebanon in 2000, after 22 years of occupation.
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We’ll then use our permits to travel to the
Al Khiam Prison
, which was notoriously used by the Israeli occupation and their Lebanese allies to detain and t
orture Lebanese
resistance fights. Here we’ll see the methods used to torture and gain important information for the war. When the prison was liberated, the Lebanese allies of Israel who ran the prison fled to Israel. Parts of the prison were then bom
bed to hide the evidence.
- Finally we’ll take a drive along the wall that the Israelis have built to cut off parts of Lebanon and the border areas under the watch of UN peacekeepers. After a very full day of site-seeing, we’ll head back to Beirut with a stop in Sidon for dinner.
Day 3Fri Jun 10
Baalbek
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Baalbek is one of those must-see sites, the most famous in all of Leban
on and considered one of the world’s most important historical sites. During the Greek and Roman Empires, the city was known as Heliopolis. Baalbek dates back to possibly as early as 9000 BC, when it was an important place of worship. In 1984 it was made a UNESCO World Heritage site and you can see why with its magnificent towering monuments and impressive structures. Baalbek stopped being a city in 748 when it was partly destroyed and ransacked by Marwan II of the Umayyad Caliphate.
- We'll take the scenic route there, through the mountains east of Beirut, but on the way back we'll drive through the Beka Valley, stopping at our favourite winery on the way home.
- Rayak Winery is in the town of Rayak, and is a really magical experience. Family run, it is definitely a passion project, and you won't find their wines sold anywhere other than at their own cellar door. For $5 per person we'll be given a "tasting" (though we can pour our own from the vats!), while the owner will proudly explain in as much detail as you like about all the processes involved. Then to top it off, we'll be given an arak display. And this is no joke - this is genuinely some of the best wine you'll ever have tasted.
- We'll stop for dinner on the way through the Beka Valley and return to Beirut in the evening.
Day 4Sat Jun 11
Jeita Grotto, Dictator Museum
- Another one of the must-see sites in Lebanon is the Jeita Grotto. The grotto is the longest cave in the Middle East at over 9km long and is only a short drive from Beirut. There are actually two caves, but they are linked by smaller passages. One of the highlights is the impressive collection of stalactites and stalagmites, as well as the underground river.
- It is believed the caves were infact inhabitated during prehistoric times but then weren’t discovered until 1836 by an American missionary.
- The area itself has been appropriately kept natural with souvenir shops, train rides, ropeways, a small zoo, a sculpture park and all the other gimmicks you’d expect.
- After the grotto you’re in for a real treat! The Hall of Fame Museum, the world’s first animated silicon museum. Some of your favourite world leaders are here and prime for a photo opportunity. American Presidents such as Bill Clinton and George Bush, dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Honsi Mubarak as well as other eminent individuals such as Einstein, Pope John Paul II and Arafat. There’s also a lot of Lebanese political leaders as well.
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Heading to the southern side of Beirut again we'll drive into the mountains to one of the stranger sites in Lebanon, the Moussa Castle.
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As a young man Moussa Al Maamari had a hard life, ridiculed by teachers and shunned by the girl he wanted to be with. Instead of despair he bought himself some land and made it his life-long ambition to build his own castle. Doing part time work elsewhere to fund his dream, he not only built a large castle but filled it with an eclectic collection of guns, jewellery and wax figures.
Day 5Sun Jun 12
Moussa Castle, Beirut
- Today we’ll head to one of the stranger sites in Lebanon, the Moussa Castle.
- As a young man Moussa Al Maamari had a hard life, ridiculed by teachers and shunned by the girl he wanted to be with. Instead of despair he bought himself some land and made it his life-long ambition to build his own castle. Doing part time work elsewhere to fund his dream, he not only built a large castle but filled it with an eclectic collection of guns, jewellery and wax figures.
- This realistic castle even has a moat and drawbridge. Moussa is still alive and loves to take people around his life’s work.
- In the afternoon we’ll check out any sites we missed in Beirut. Lebanese traffic can sometimes be mayhem, so while we’ll try to fit in parts of Beirut on earlier days, it’s good to know we have a free afternoon today.
- Beirut itself is an exciting city with so much to see that you could hypothetically just stay there and explore the city for a week.
- The Egg, as it is now known, is a modernist cinema that survived war to stand as a symbol of Beirut. Once a functioning cinema, it now stands abandoned next to Martyrs’ Square, covered in bullet holes. Although it was completely off limits for most of its existence, in 2019 protesters opened it up, creating a public art space.
- Another SAIGA favourite is the Grudge house, the thinnest house in Lebanon, built due to a feud between brothers.
- As this is our last night all together, we'll make sure to have a great farewell dinner at a Lebanese resturant
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