tourism in lebanon

A Deadly Kind of Love

~ karenkaram ~ 3 Comments

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To2borne, meaning may you bury me, is by far the funniest and the most Lebanese of expressions. Try explaining it to a non-speaking Arabic friend and you’ll understand how completely absurd it is. It’s a word of endearment from one loving person to another. Parents when talking to their children or about them, grandparents, and family members, most commonly use it. It is said to a loved one meaning you wish to die before them, thus them burying you so you never have to live a day without them.

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Gemayzeh’s Soul

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Amongst the hustle and bustle of every day life and the youngsters’ busy nightlife in Gemayzeh, lies a small shop, a very small Dekeneh of 3m x 4m. Fahed Bou Dagher owns a small grocery shop located just before Joe Penas on Boutros Dagher Street. He sells chocolates, biscuits, chips, soft drinks, nuts, a little bit of alcohol, cigarettes, and some other random things like Hummus cans, Picon cheese, and ice cream.

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For the Love of Beer

~ karenkaram ~ 4 Comments

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Behind every passionate story, there is a protagonist who’s the avid champion of its idea. Born and raised in Batroun, Jamil Haddad is a sun kissed 32 year old adventurer at heart. He started brewing beer at home at the age of 22, mixing, trying different tastes and flavors, and inviting his friends over for tasting. When he decided to follow his passion, he travelled over four years around Europe and stayed in London learning the ropes of brewing. In the summer of 2013 he quit his job to focus on founding the brewery and a year later, in June, he started to sell the first bottles of Colonel. Everything about Colonel beer has been thought of, the man dressed in army clothes wearing a pirate hat on the bottle is an ode to the stretch of land where he surfs with his friends, which is located next to Colonel Bitar’s chalet by the sea in Batroun.

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Old Men and the Sea

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As the light starts to fill the sky and the warmth of the sun spreads on the Mediterranean Sea, a flicker of human shapes spread along the Cornish from a distance. Old men and some young ones too scatter along our beloved Cornish, one of the last democratic public spaces in Beirut, holding their fishing rods and their wicker baskets. There is nothing I love more in the morning than that little picturesque strip that has become a landmark of Beirut and its mix of people.

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The Eternal Sisters

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The Sisters or The Sisters Olive Trees of Noah are tucked away in the sleepy village of Bechealeh, in the North of Lebanon. They are a grove of sixteen olive trees, the oldest olive trees in the world, that have witnessed 5000 years of political unrest, plagues, diseases, varying climatic conditions and changing civilizations. The Sisters’ are said to be from an undocumented olive tree variety, an ancestor of the Balasi Ayrouni. They remain one of the great unresolved and virtually unexplored pre-Biblical mysteries; common folklore and a few Biblical Scholars believe that these are the trees from which the dove took the branch back to Noah when the deluge subsided.

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