cunningham: Lebanon

After Morocco we hit up Lebanon for a few days. Going into this trip I was mildly terrified about going to Lebanon, mostly because every time I mentioned to people that we were headed there they'd respond with gasps of horror and then would proceed to tell me how horrible and dangerous and miserable it would be there and that we were nuts to vacation there. So, rather than cancelling our trip I begged my parents to promise to take Emerson and raise her in case we died in Lebanon and then continued on with my vacation planning.

In case you were wondering, Lebanon was actually wonderful. Ammon and I both agree that we would definitely go back, but maybe we'll wait until things cool down a little in Syria. Safety first!

This picture is not that cool, but I had to post it because Ammon almost got us thrown into prison for taking it. The guards in Lebanon don't mess around about people taking pictures of their guard towers.

I'm mostly kidding.

This is pigeon rock. It's a super famous rock in Lebanon. I think pigeons might live there? I'm not sure.

One of the things that we wanted to see while in Lebanon was their national museum. Lebanon's history is really cool because it has been occupied by so many different cultures. Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and many more. In the museum they showed a video about the history of the building. In 1975 during the Lebanese civil war the building was actually bombed and destroyed. Luckily many of the larger pieces were saved, but they still lost tons and tons of ancient artifacts.

Here we have a random ancient Roman ruin that was just sitting out on the side of the road. Seriously, it was awesome.

Can we just take a moment to discuss the fact that this was probably one of the greatest meals I've ever had in my entire life. We had no idea what we were getting, since the entire menu was in Arabic, but there was one woman working at the restaurant who spoke a little bit of English, and with the bit of Arabic that Ammon knows he was able to tell her to just get us something delicious. She did not disappoint.

Dessert. Because, well, it's dessert. It has to happen.

Luckily for us one of the days that we were there we had some wonderful people to take us around. Mohammad managed the apartment that we were staying and Nadia was his sweet fiance. While we were with them we traveled over to the Jeita Grotto.

It's a series of caves full of some of the most amazing stalactites and stalagmites in the world. Sadly, they don't let you take pictures inside of the caves but I stole some pictures from the internet.

/end stolen pictures

The four of us in the tram on our way up the mountain to the Jeita.

Sadly, this day was cold and rainy. Luckily Nadia was actually prepared and brought an umbrella.

Some of the buildings were so fun. I mean, seriously, check out that staircase. That would be terrifying.

One night while we were there we did a quick game of bowling. Apparently they don't make you wear special bowling shoes when you bowl in Lebanon. I'm going to say that was the reason for our depressing scores.

Seriously?! 29?? How does that even happen?

Every country we've been to Ammon and I have gotten matching shirts there. This is the place where we got our I love Lebanon shirts. You can see the mock up on the computer. Also, this is the shop where Ammon spoke his 5th language on our trip. Randomly one of the owners of this shop had lived in China for a while so he and Ammon had a nice conversation in Mandarin.

A pretty mosque!

One of the most sobering experiences of our trip was when we would be walking down the street and run across a building that had been bombed years before. One of the saddest things we saw was an opera house that had been destroyed.