Cedars of Lebanon!

Finally I'm here. In the country I've dreamed about for such a long time. A heaven for a vegetarian. Yesterday night I crossed the border to Lebanon!

Yes, another shared taxi across another border, this time from Syria to Lebanon, and one hour later I arrived in Tripoli. Had a good night beside the sea together with some new-found friends and a couple of Efes, but the thing I' ve been really looking forward to were about to take place today. The Cedars! And it fell out even better than I hoped.

To get to the small village and ski resort called Cedars you have to take a minibus from Tripoli up in the mountains. The view from the car is actually anough for a day trip, but there are more good things coming up. The bus will take you to a small town called Bcharre from where you have to arrange a taxi trip up to Cedars. But Bcharre is not only a place where you jump out of the bus and try to find a taxi as soon as posible. Bcharre is also the place where one of the most famous poets in the world was born, lived during his first twelve years and also burried. His name was Khalil Gibran and I'm sure many of you know about his most famous book, The Prophet.

After some two hours in the house where he was born and at the museum where they have collected a lot of his belongings, paintings and writings (you can see his coffin as well) I moved on up the hill to Cedars. Wow.

The trees are so amazing and the atmosphere is just perfect, as in the surroundings (I can see how Gibran were inspired to write as he did). It's been one of the worst winters ever for skiing, there's no snow at all, so no skiing for me this time, but a lot of walking around in the park where most of the trees are. I had such a god time! And then back again down the mountain to Tripoli where you ca get a falafel for 0.50 euro. Add to this that the falafel of Tripoli is probably the best I've had so far in my life and you can see why I don't complain at all at the moment.

The sun is smiling towards me, and I'm smiling back!