Duty free in Beirut

Back from a long weekend in Beirut. As I am just off one crushing work deadline and leapfrogging right into the fire of the next, it was a welcome relief from work.

I traveled again with a colleague, but this time we had no real plan except eat. Lebanese food is garlicky good, and that’s pretty much all that I ate, save a Dunkin’ Donut on which I splurged. That was quite a find.

Our first find of the trip, though, was in the gate area. Traveling Colleague and I met up in the gate area. She arrived earlier than I did, and when I joined her, the flight just before ours had just shut its doors. There was only one other person in the gate area, and as I walked up, I noticed a bag sitting across from TC.

 

As I sat down, I commented that she’d taken a seat next to a suspicious package, and apparently it hadn’t occurred to her that it could have been something other than trash. She took a look, and it turned out to be a bottle of rum and a bottle of Bailey’s, purchased from the duty-free store.

We figured what the heck and took it, as the owner’s flight had by that time pulled away from the gate. It’s not possible to return the stuff, and what else was going to happen? We were traveling light, so why not?

I don’t drink, but I think TC was happy to have a wind-down drink after all the walking we did. In the end, we gave the booze to the hotel clerk, who, when I told her what was in the bag, happily said, “Oooh! I like Bailey’s.” So we found the stuff a good home.

Beirut was a good choice, I think. And I set a trend. I’d bought my flight a couple months ago and since then I found out at least three others decided to do, plus TC jumped on with me.

We didn’t do anything special – beyond the eating – and walked a ton. We arrived on Friday – a holiday in Istanbul – and wound up walking something like 6k that day. The parts we explored were divided into three sections – east, middle and west – and boy, we hit them all hard.

The civil war ended in 1991, I think it was, and Beirut’s done a phenomenal job of rebuilding, and fast. In some ways, it was a quite a metropolitan city, but in others, you could definitely tell it had a rough past. There were barricades, razor wide and armed guards, but, across the street, there were Tiffany, Ferrari and H&M stores.

I’d read about “the souk” area and figured it would be a bunch of stalls with people hawking their handicrafts, but it was a blocks-long, outdoor high-end mall. The kind with escalators and fountains. It was absolutely beautiful, as was the view from the corniche. Of course, water and boats are always gorgeous.

We tried to find handicrafts, though, and did not really succeed. It wasn’t a colossal failure, but I never figured out what, other than cedar magnets, Lebanon did. I found some rugs, but nothing that I fell in love with, which was good because they were pricey. (Well, that and I’m running out of floor space.)

I came home with a cedar magnet, a couple of rocks, a birthday card for a friend, a little surprise for Riley that was hard to come up with, and – of all things – onion powder. I ran out and I haven’t found any here yet.

Considering I left the book I brought in the room, I think I left with less than I brought.

Oh, I forgot about the bandages. I bought 10, but only came home with two. My Chacos, and I do love them, hurt me so badly the first time I wear them each season. My feet were so bad after the first day. I bought the little bandages, and wore them the next day but it rained.

 

Here’s a lesson: I am stuck on Band-aid brand ‘cause Band-aid’s stuck on me.

Yeah, I know that’s not a lesson but a jingle, but that was going through my head all Saturday because I did NOT buy Band-aid brand. I didn’t think I needed 20 bandages, so I got 10, and the one with 10 was  some cheap Lebanese brand, I guess. In the rain, they didn’t do any good. They were NOT Band-aid brand, and they were definitely, absolutely not stuck on me.

It was a pretty rough. My feel right now look like they have some kind of horrible pox because, two days later, it’s still clear that I have open wounds all over them. They’re pretty symmetrical, though. Little toe, big toe side, big toe front, heel back.

The little piggies that went wee-wee-wee all the way home had it worse. The right one got strangled, as it tends to do – I need to figure out how to adjust the Chacos – but the left one just went numb and bled and bled. Every time I looked down, I had blood streaming. Since it was numb, it didn’t really occur to me that anything was happening, but I’d glance down and horrify myself, especially in a light rain.

Before we went into the rug store, I had to triage myself a bit, not wanting some kind of “you bled on it, you bought it” rule to come into effect. And when we got back to the hotel room on Saturday night – after 19.7k of walking, I stripped off the sandals and went into the bathroom to hose down. It looked like an industrial accident because the sandal straps had soaked with blood.

Sunday, I went with shoes instead. We went for a long, long walk – 6k this time – to the national museum, which was small but nice to see. The best item they had was a sarcophagus called “Drunken cupids.” It was exactly what you’d think – a bunch of cupids drunk, including one holding another’s head as he puked.