Forget the turmoil in the Middle East for a minute, and remember how Beirut, Lebanon’s chic capital on the Mediterranean, remains a prime destination for travelers to the Arab world (at least, those looking for kebab shops located next to hip sushi joints next to Prada stores).

As The Independent pointed our recently, things have been especially quiet since the Israeli bombings in 2006, and new spots to check out around the city are popping up everyday, including the St George’s Cathedral Crypt Museum where you can view eight archaeological layers, from Hellenistic to Ottoman, that encompass Beirut’s history, and you can see everything from “the remains of six churches that date back 2,000 years . . . sandstone tombs, 18th-century frescos salvaged from the bombed out cathedral (complete with bullet holes), a section of Roman road, and a skylight looking up into the altar of this renovated Maronite church.”

The post Beirut Is Back (Did It Ever Leave?) appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

Impressive vistas, grilled meat on an open flame, shots of faces that tell a story all of their own — this stunning video of Lebanon tells centuries worth of tales without saying a word.

James Lewis’ video from his travels in Lebanon better be good: a glimpse at his Vimeo page reveals he works for a visual effects company that worked on both “The Dark Knight” and “Inception.”

Check out the poignant images at 1:58 where a young boy points out the bullet holes in a wall, presumably in the country’s capital of Beirut, a reminder of some of the city’s not-so-better (but hopefully long-in-the-past) days.

The post Video: Lebanon — No Words Necessary appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

You got sick on your trip, you lost your passport, your flight got canceled, etc. . . . These are all good yarns for when you get back home, but how many people can say they have had a war break out in the country while they were visiting? Tony can, but let’s be honest, those odds are little higher when you spend most of the year traveling.

Tonight, “No Reservations” heads back to Beirut, Lebanon, to start off where they began three years ago when Israeli missiles starting dropping all around them and they had to skip town on an American warship. Restaurants included in tonight’s episode include Le Chef Restaurant (where they went last time), Chez Maguy in the town of Batroun (just north of Beirut), and Massaya Vineyard where it appears Tony shares a bottle of vino with, naturally, some hipster Lebanese (although, if you’re going to go to a vineyard, a yellow fedora does make sense, doesn’t it?).

The post Bourdain: 1, Beirut: 1; It’s All Tied Up appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

Ahh, isn’t alliteration so fun? Remember that most famous of “No Reservations” — the one where Tony and crew get caught in the crosshairs of a little squabble between Lebanon and Israel back in the summer of 2006, in what turned out to be the beginning of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, and what also turned out to be one of the series’ most infamous episodes (and the one, in my humble opinion, with some of the best writing we’ve seen on the show, including this great send-off we discussed a little way back).

Four years have past, bygones have become bygones (as they tend to do, every notice that?), and “No Reservations” has returned to Beirut for this latest season. Tony recently sat down with CNN and discussed his feelings on returning to the city, where he went, and, most importanly, what he ate.

First order of business, we went back to Le Chef. We made a point of going back with the exact same camera crew and producer, who were stuck with me in 2006. And we met with largely the same people, even went to the places we didn’t get the opportunity to visit last time, and we met with people from the previous episode.

Met with Kamal [Mouzawak], the guy who runs Souk el Tayeb [Beirut’s first farmer’s market], went to the restaurant that showcases regional produce and specialties [Tawlet]. We had a meal at his [Kamal’s] house. Ate seafood along the coast, falafel at a famous place run by two brothers who don’t talk to one another [Falafel Sahyoun].

Had sfiha [meat pies] near Baalbeck, went to a vineyard where they make traditional arak [a clear, aniseed flavored alcoholic beverage] and wine. Try to eat around high and low. Had traditional Armenian food at a restaurant in the Armenian district.

The post Bourdain Back In Beirut appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

Ever since I saw the “No Reservations” Beirut episode last year, I’ve been wanting to go myself (despite the fact that half the episode was spent watching Tony try to leave the city as war was erupting outside). Who wouldn’t be curious about the “Paris of the East,” a city known for its cosmopolitan flair, hoppin’ nightlife, thriving culture, and, yeah, amazing food?

And I’m not the only one. In fact, travel to Lebanon in 2009  increased a whopping 39% from 2008, with 1,851,081 visitors entering the country.

This week the UK Times decided to check out the turnaround of fortune for this notoriously party-friendly city.

It is hard for people who visit the shiny, refurbished Beirut of today to understand how remarkable the transformation has been. The shops are back, parliament has reopened and most of the ruins on show today — with the exception of the bullet-scarred Holiday Inn — are of the Roman variety.

Rumor has it, Tony’s going back to the city this year to see what he missed. He’s not the only one.

The post Why I Want To See Beirut (And So Should You) appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

I stumbled upon a couple of articles in The Gazette this week highlighting Beirut, capital of Lebanon, as a city coming back to life. For the past 4o-plus years, this country has seen some of the worst of times. Situated in a precarious geographical position, it has been in the middle and on the sidelines of war.

However, as the article mentions, in January 2009, Beirut topped the New York Times list for vacation destinations. During the same year, Lonely Planet ranked the capital in it´s list of top ten cities for its ¨charm and cultural dynamism.¨ The year 2009 also saw a record 2 million tourists, according to The Montreal Gazette. As a result, it is suggested that the hopes and dreams are high right now for bringing Beirut back to its pre-1970s luster. The London-based, boutique hotel, Le Gray, is merely one of many that aim to take advantage of the growing tourism. Plans for a Four Seasons and a Hyatt are underway.

Along with a record amount of tourists, 2009 was a year of peace for the metropolis that still has battle wounds from, as recent as, 2008. My questions are: Has peace befallen Beirut because of tourism or has tourism increased because it was a time of peace? Are tourists becoming more fascinated by war, wanting to experience it firsthand? Or, does the increase in tourism provide more media attention, thus a time of tranquility? I know that the same questions arose when the Olympics went to Beijing and these are the types of questions we should keep asking ourselves. Nonetheless, it is the proverbial chicken or the egg.

I suppose with more people traveling than ever, the grey area of politics, power and peace become a little more transparent. The successive question is whether our desire just to see another place will ruin our chance to truly experience it? The hotels will provide jobs, apparently peace, and stimulate the economy. I wonder what happens to the rest of the country? It´s been a long-standing, internal debate of my own: does tourism help or hinder? Possibly, in this case, tourism helps if it means people are safe from being bombed. Nevertheless, I still wonder, what are the long-term effects of Western-based businesses that have different outlooks on the way things ¨ought¨ to be?

A very close friend of mine is Lebanese. Her mom and dad live in Lebanon. I wonder what their thoughts are? I will have to get back to you on this one.

By Brit Weaver

About the Author

Toronto born and based, Brit is an avid leisure cyclist, coffee drinker and under-a-tree park-ist. She often finds herself meandering foreign cities looking for street eats to nibble, trees to climb, a patch of grass to sit on, or a small bookstore to sift through. You can find her musing life on her personal blog, TheBubblesAreDead.wordpress.com.

The post War And Peace: Beirut´s Boom In Tourism (Good Or Bad?) appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

Food markets are probably the best place visit in order to immerse yourself in the culture of the land, and there’s no better place to do this while you’re in Beirut than at the Souk-el-Tayeb farmers’ market. As was discovered by Joy of the Independant, “there’s a growing movement towards organic food in Lebanon, but the real mission of the Souk-el-Tayeb is to reconnect the land to the city”

“For many, the first glimpse of Lebanon is Beirut, a city of Starbucks, late-night bars and hyper-preened women. It hums with a mix of Eurotrash style and Middle Eastern traffic chaos: loud, brash and ostentatiously wealthy. As with many capital cities, it offers a façade behind which lies quite a different country.”

But far from the frenzied nightlife and glitterati that is all too apparent in this city, the market offers home-produced goods such as olive oils, fruits, jams, pickles, as well as homemade crafts.

And the best part in my opinion? By signing up on their website, you can venture out into the country and visit the various producers on their land to see where the food is grown. Way better than lounging by the pool all day in my opnion.

The post How To Go Organic While In Lebanon appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

I’ve been catching up with “No Reservations” the last month or so via Netflix, starting from the beginning, and last night I finally saw the infamous episode in Beirut (Collection 2: Disc 3), and I’ve got to say, if you’re going to watch any travel show, see this one.

It starts off like normal, and Tony and the crew get about a day and a half into shooting, doing their normal shtick (meet up with a local, head to a local dive for traditional comfort fare, eat some street food on the way back from the bar — the somewhat formulaic routine of the show), when all of a sudden, actual shooting begins in the streets around them.

At first everyone doesn’t seem too worried and they attempt to continue on with the show, but as the hours pass, the violence begins to escalate until the airport runway gets bombed out and the crew is left scrambling for somewhere safe to stay until the government can finally boat them out (which finally happens a few days later after being holed up in a hilltop hotel).

Though little of Beirut is actually shown, and you’d be hard-pressed to find much footage that the Beirut Tourism Office would want to include in a promotional video, I think what makes this episode so great is the fact that the events that occurred while they were there forced them to drop their normal formula and create a true travel narrative, with all the drama, uncertainty and realism that occurs when experiencing the real world.

Forget state-sponsored guides and flashy dinners, for once Tony was able to get a rare, honest look at a culture, for better and for worse. He saw life how the Lebanese see life, and he saw the Lebanese living life under extreme duress, and all the good and bad that that can elicit.

Too often, travel shows tend to gloss over the ugly and highlight the pretty, creating the sort of packageable, palatable look at a culture that often results in a bland,  forgettable experience (just the opposite of what a a travel show should be doing in my opinion). To me, I’d rather see both sides; it’s more interesting because if’s honest: Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

The best part of the show is Tony’s “Empire Strikes Back”-ish reflection on his travels since he began the show, and what, if anything, he’s learned. I’d like to think that his thoughts were the result of the traumatic experience he just had, and I hope that his doom and gloom has since been proven wrong and that it’s his third-from-last, and not the second-to-last paragraph that has since been proven true as his travels have continued. Here are his parting words:

In the few years since I’ve started to travel this world, I’ve found myself changing. The cramped cynical worldview of a man who’d only seen life through the narrow prism of the restaurant kitchen had altered. I’d been so many places, I’d met so many people from wildly divergent backgrounds, countries, and cultures.

Everywhere I’d been, I’d been, as in Beruit, treated so well. I’d been the recipient of so many random acts of kindness from strangers and I’d begun to think that no matter where I went or who I sat down with, that food and a few drinks seemed always to bring people together. That this planet was filled with basically good and decent people doing the best they could, if frequently under difficult circumstances. That the human animal was perhaps a better and nicer species than I had once thought.

I’d begun to believe that the dinner table was the great leveler, where people from opposite sides of the world could always sit down and talk and eat and drink and if not solve all the worlds problems, at least find, for a time, common ground.

Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe the world’s not like that at all. Maybe in the real world?—?the one without cameras and happy food and travel shows?—?everybody, the good and the bad together, are all crushed under some terrible wheel.

I hope, I really hope, that I’m wrong about that.

The post Bourdain In Beirut: The Best “No Reservations” Episode Ever? appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.