Day 1 - Beirut

I am typing this message thanks to the magic of blackberry as I wait for a steak in, well, a steakhouse. (A french one, for that added bit of foreign frisson.) It has, by and large, been an interesting day, involving no riding but a certain amount of intelligence gathering and general wandering around.

Things I have learned in the course of the day are as follows (in no particular order):

1. One should not attempt to cycle across the border to Damascus from the Bekaa valley

-Just as riding it from beirut is apparently suicidal due to the deranged lebanese drivers (they don't seem too bad so far, but the lebanese who told me that live in new york, so they should be able to spot crap drivers), the route from baalbek opens the possibility of hezbollah interrogation. While I am reliably assured that "nothing bad" would come of such questioning, I do feel that in this case discretion may be the better form of valour.

2. Snazzy areas of Beirut have valet parking, nice restaurants, and guys with sniffer dogs checking cars for explosives

3. Converted crusader churches make for strange, and probably slightly inconvenient mosques

4. Some parts of downtown really are still pockmarked with bullet holes; elsewhere they've done an amazing job of cleaning it up and rebuilding (though it was still an eye-opener to see pictures of the pool-size crater created by the bomb that killed Hariri)

Tomorrow I head to Byblos, via the Jaita grottoes, but will be back in Beirut tomorrow night.