JOUNIEH , LEBANON

After giving a wide berth to the tankers loading petroleum offshore from Tripoli, we arrive at Jounieh, described as one of the most exclusive marinas in the Eastern Med, a short distance from the intriguing city of Beirut. Once described as the “Paris of the Mid-East”, Beirut has experienced conflict since the civil war in starting 1975 which lasted almost 20 years and subsequent turmoil of Mid East politics, dividing the city into Christian East and Muslim West Beirut. You will find the restoration of downtown Beirut to be very modern and beautiful and the shopping and provisioning in Beirut is excellent.

Beirut’s history dates back to 1500 BC as part of the Phoenician Empire, providing cedar for the ships travelling from the fabled Sidon and Tyre, to its south. The Phoenicians were descendents of the Canaanites and Sidonions mentioned in the Old Testament. As a small coastal group they depended on the sea and trade, becoming skilled navigators and ship builders. They dominated the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean) and the Maghreb (North Africa from Morocco to Libya), worked silver mines in Spain (they founded Cadiz), and traded for tin from as far away as England (Cornwall). King Solomon sent to Phoenician King Hiram for materials and skilled workers to build the Temple in Jerusalem. The Phoenicians also provided ships (made from Lebanon’s cedars) to the great Persian fleets for their conquests. They established a trading colony in Carthage in 814 BC, and dominated the Mediterranean until the Punic Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC when finally defeated by Rome.
Several tours have been organised during our stay in Jounieh.
- On the first afternoon, dinner on your own at the various eating places in Jounieh or Beirut and free time. Taxis are reasonable prices.
- An interesting full day tour to Byblos (World Heritage Site—1984), the Jeita Grotto, and Harissa in the Kesrwan region.
- A tour of Baalbeck (World Heritage Site-1984) and Anjar (World Heritage Site- 1984);
- A half-day tour of Beirut, its museum and shopping
- An optional tour to the south, Sidon and Tyre (World Heritage Sites) is also being offered for those interested
The day tour to Baalbeck (World Heritage Site-1984) and Anjar (World Heritage Site- 1984) in the fertile and historic Bekaa Valley is our first tour.

Baalbeck, known to the Greeks and Romans as the “City of the Sun” is undoubtedly the most outstanding example of Roman ruins to found in the whole region and perhaps more impressive than Athens or Rome. It is one of the most ancient cities of the world, first built as a center for pagan worship to the God of the Sun, Baal, then the god Helios of the Greeks (when Baalbek was renamed Heliopolis) and later the Roman God, Jupiter. The building of Baalbek went on over 10 generations and is said to have cost the lives of over 100,000 slaves. Artists and craftsmen were brought here from throughout the Roman Empire.

Anjar is a major tourist and archaeological site as it is the remains of an ancient, exclusively Arab city. The site is a four square town divided into four equal quadrants by two wide avenues, with the four main gates at the cardinal points of the compass. Three palaces, souks, hamans, cobblestone streets, and mosques make this a well-restored and complete ancient town site.

In the afternoon, we will be fortunate to visit the Ksara Winery in the Bekaa Valley for a wine tasting, as Lebanese wines are to be recommended—a good opportunity to fill the ship’s stores.

Day 2, full-day tour will include a visit Byblos. A major contribution the Phoenicians of what is now Lebanon made was in their city of Byblos, where syllabic writing, the precursor of our alphabet, was developed about 1000BC. It is the source of the Greek word “biblia” meaning “book” and our word, “Bible”. They modified Egyptian hieroglyphics and symbols into a syllabic script with 22 “letters”. In the 9th century BC this system was borrowed and developed further by the Greeks, who switched the reading and writing from right to left to our present left to right format. The original Phoenician Aramaic writing was adopted by the Hebrews, and parts of the Old and New Testaments were written in that language. Hebrew and Arabic still use the right to left in their script. The Greeks developed the signs (letters of the alphabet), which were subsequently adopted by the Latin alphabet and ultimately the Western World. Our letters “A, B, C, D, etc.” are from the Greek “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc.”, but originally from the Phoenician “Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, etc.” Even today the Lebanese have the highest literacy rate (over 92%) of the Arab countries.

Byblos has the remains of several one-roomed huts with crushed limestone floors, used by a fishing community dating back to 5000 BC. The remains of the later massive Early Bronze Age city walls of about 2800 BC testify to the belief of the Phoenician tradition that the city was founded by their god El. Be sure to see the Crusader castle built in the 12th century, the Egyptian temples dating back to 4000 BC, the Roman Amphitheatre and the Phoenician royal necropolis.

The Jeita Grotto presents to us a dramatic subterranean cavern formation of over 6 kilometres of river and fantastical limestone deposits, of grottoes, stalactites and stalagmites on two levels. The 650 meter lower level is traversed by boat through a Stygian darkness on a subterranean river, winding its way through various levels of illuminated narrow rock cuts and more open cathedral-like caverns. The upper level is baroquely decorated with frozen limestone waterfalls, petrified mushroom shapes, and bubbled candle waxed stalagmites and stalactites stretching from the convoluted floor to the cathedral heights of this astounding formation. Reached by cable car, the Virgin of Harissa standing on the heights overlooking Jounieh presents a vast panorama, complemented by the many monasteries of unusual design located around this holy site.

The optional tour to the south goes along the coast to Sidon which was one of the Phoenician great city states. Under the Persians, the king of Sidon acted as Admiral of the fleet of ships that defeated the Egyptians in 525BC, Miletus in western Turkey against the Greeks in 494BC and Salamis (on Cyprus) in 480BC. It was incorporated into the Umayyad Empire of the Moslems, captured by the Crusaders and finally surrendered to Saladin in 1187. It passed back and forth between the Moslems and Christians at lease five times. The Crusader sea castle and the medieval town give Sidon its charm.

The ancient history of the city of Tyre, known today as Sour, is formidable since this was one of the most important of the Phoenician coast’s city states. The sailing fleets from Tyre went out to the entire known world and even established the colony of Carthage, the birthplace of Hannibal. Throughout history, Tyre was under siege many times and for long periods of months to several years. Tyre was one of the few places that chose to resist Alexander the Great for the 7 month siege. The Crusaders managed to take the city but only after a 5 month siege. Saladin was not able to take the city after his capture of the city of Jerusalem. The Crusaders finally abandoned Tyre, Sidon and Beirut after the fall of Acco to the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1291.

There will also be a half-day tour to Beirut to see the famous downtown, restored buildings, remaining ruins, old villas, luxurious international boutiques and the narrow pedestrian streets full of restaurants, cafes and shops. There will also be a visit to the National Museum. We will stop for shopping in a large commercial center where you can buy many European and especially, French products. This is a good provisioning stop.