Day 3 - Baalbek

Hopefully the pictures made it onto here, though they do the Temple of
Jupiter only scant justice. The pictures I took on my other camera are
better, but even at 10 megapixels it won't capture the experience of
sitting there.

On the other hand, if you could see the hotel I am staying in tonight,
you might be willing to trade off slightly inferior resolution for the
ability to avoid sleeping here. Long, Shining-like corridors, only
intermittently lit and even then illuminating only the cracks in the
place's long-ago grandeur. Apparently Jean Cocteau and the Shah of
Iran stayed here once, but for tonight I think I may be the only
guest.

The reason is not that there's anywhere better in town, its just that
there's no western tourists around, period. I've seen plenty of gulf
arabs around the place but, other than two Americans at AUB in Beirut
and a French couple here, I've seen nobody - I guess that the 2006
conflict and the recent political violence have done a number on the
package tour business. As a result, I was mobbed outside the ruins
today by every hezbollah T-shirt seller, trinket plugger, tourist
swindler and postcard purveyor in town, all of whom apparently
expected me to singlehandedly make their third quarter numbers.
Needless to say, I was not the market maker they had prayed for...

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