When I arrived in Beirut, I immediately met a nice girl at the hostel I was staying at who wanted to go on a day trip the next day. Of course the more logical start for seeing Lebanon would have been to explore Beirut first – but since she had it all figured out and wanted to see all places that I had planned to go to the next few days anyways, the choice was easy for me to accompany her.

We first took a bus to Jeita Junction, from where we continued with a shared taxi in the direction of Jeita Grotto. We had to walk the last 20 min or so, but it was an enjoyable walk. I immediately started falling in love with Lebanon – everything was so nicely green again, the ocean was gleaming nice and blue and people were once again warm and welcoming. I even felt more welcome here than in Jordan, since it’s a bit more Western and there are many Christians which means women don’t need to cover themselves and it’s just more open in all kind of ways.

But back to the Jeita Grotto. I have seen many, many caves in my life, so was a bit doubtful about how much I would enjoy this one. However – I am very glad I went, since it ended up being the most beautiful cave I had ever seen!! It was not the largest one for sure (at least not the part you can visit for now), but the stalactites and stalacmites are stunning. For some odd reason they do not allow you to bring your camera inside, something I cannot understand at all. You even have to lock it away in a locker right in front of the cave – so no chance smuggling it in. They also keep your phones usually, but I managed to smuggle mine in anyways. Haha! So at least I was able to take a couple of sneaky shots – before I got told off by one of the security staff. While it was amazing to visit this cave, part of me was crying on the inside because I couldn’t take the photos that I wanted to. It was painful. Especially with my wide-angle lens, I would have been able to take so many cool shots. Sigh.

When we were done with touring the upper and lower caves, we started walking along the road and attempted to get a shared taxi ride to the cable car of Jounieh, which worked out well in the end. We got dropped exactely at the station, and bought our tickets for the tiny (2 person) cable car – great views and a cool experience, being in such a small cable car!

Up at the top, there’s the statue of Our Lady of Lebanon which is not the special though. What is special, are the amazing views you get from up there over the whole area. The bay at Jounieh has a picturesque shape and the colours were once again brilliant. Bye bye, desert landscape!

As a last stop of the day, we pushed further to Byblos – a cute little town with some ruins, old streets and a little harbour. I really liked Byblos – you could walk around without getting hassled and it was very peaceful. We first explored the ruins, which again where not that special themselves, but the site offered some really nice views and great photo opportunities.

Later, we walked through the small streets to the harbour and around the rest of the town. If there was a hostel in Byblos, I would have certainly liked to spend a night there – but to this date there is no budget accommodation available unfortunately, so back to Beirut we went!