One of the Last Beach Days

Five Dutch Girls on the beach in Lebanon

The weather is fantastically mellow; it’s the best season of the year, the time between summer and fall. Although fall is pretty good too. And spring. And now that I think about it, winter is good too when you like skiing. Summer’s the only season when I escape Beirut. Too hot. Too sticky. Too humid. Too crowded. Too much of everything.

The traffic is a bit off though. I’ve been standing in traffic jams for the past 3 days. A trip from Hamra to Sassine (East Beirut) takes a good hour if you are lucky. I think if I’d walk, I’d probably get their faster.

I thought it was because many schools had started again. My friend blames the traffic lights. He believes the Lebanese are becoming ‘passive’ drivers, now that they have lights doing the job for them. Hubbie says it’s because all the ‘khaliji’ (Gulf Arabs) are in town for the Eid (feast).

I don’t know what it is, but I’m looking at buying a scooter.

In the meantime, a picture of one of the last beach days of the season. It is not that we have a large Dutch community in town. Quite the opposite. One of the former Dutch ambassadors described the Dutch community jokingly as “70 unhappily married women and 1 man.” I don’t think that’s quite accurate, but if you’d have gone to the beach last Tuesday, you’d have thought you were in Holland. There must have been over 12 Dutchies, with kids. And we recently lost another blogger. Gone back to the motherland. We don’t know for how long.

Ah well.

You’ll be stuck with just me for a while.