Schlagwort-Archive: day trip

Lebanon, World Trip 2018-19

Day tripping Lebanon: Jeita Grotto, Jounieh and Byblos

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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!

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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!

 

Jordan, World Trip 2018-19

Jerash & Ajloun – a day trip from Amman

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There are many interesting sights and cities located in a 1-2 h radius around Amman, however only some of them can be visited easily on public transport – among which Jerash and Ajloun. Since I always like to see Roman ruins and Ajloun seemed like an easy addition, my plan for the day was clear! I started the day together with Monica who I had met in my hostel. Together we took a taxi to the bus station where we were lucky that the bus to Jerash was almost full already and left rather quickly (think: 20 min waiting time). After about 1,5 drive, we reached Jerash and hopped off the bus close to the entrance to the ruins.

The next couple of hours were spent exploring the ruins, an area bigger than I had expected. I’m not much into reading signboards so I cannot tell you much about the history, but it certainly was an impressive site to visit. I especially liked the many intact columns. It was a bit misty that day, so taking pictures was tricky, but at least the sun was not burning down as much.

Afterwards, I decided to continue to Ajloun by myself. I met a policemen who got me on a shared car which dropped me all the way at the top of Ajloun – at the entrance to the castle. For free! Jordanian hospitality. The castle itself was nice to see from the bottom, and the views were cool – but it was not that impressive to be honest. I was also getting a bit tired of the constant selfie requests from school kids around me (the castle was teeming with school classes!!), and it was difficult to find a quiet corner in between.

So after walking through all the rooms in the castle, and taking in the views, I walked back down to the village of Ajloun and hopped on the bus back to Amman. Unfortunately, the way back took muuuuch longer: first I had to wait for about 1 h for the bus to fill up, and then we got stuck in Amman rush hour traffic for a long time. Also, I had to take a shared taxi back to the city center which again got stuck in traffic, and still walk a while to reach my hostel. A longer day trip than expected, but a good one overall!