Hotel California: Sunset in Beirut

Best time of the day in Beirut; sunset.
Spring is in the air. There is still plenty of snow in the mountains, but it’s so warm that skiing is only possible in the early hours. After 12 o’clock you bog down in a mushy slush on the slopes. People were skiing in their T-shirts.

H. had a birthday party today in Chwayfat, which used to be a town outside Beirut, but it has merged with Beirut since 1982, when refugees from the south installed themselves in a zone between Beirut and Chwayfat. I like the town, especially the upper levels, because it has retained some of the ‘old’ Lebanese village atmosphere. People still have gardens with trees in them, and live in one-story stone houses, rather than 6-floor apartment buildings with glass balconies.
We went down (a phrase we use here to say we drive down from the mountains and drive back to Beirut) at sunset, and the view was fantastic. It reminded me of those prints of David Roberts. Roberts, a Scottish painter, traveled through Syria and Egypt in 1838. This tour of the Middle East resulted in a lithographed, two-volume set of prints called Sketches in the Holy Land and Syria. many artists went on a ‘Grand Tour’ through the region, and their scenery must have been somewhat similar to the one you see when you descend from Chwayfat (albeit with a bit of imagination. Okay, a lot of imagination).

At one point I even spotted the Hotel California of the Eagles.