Saturday in Beirut
We went to this resort-y, swimming pool-y, sunshine place yesterday, I'll send photos. It's really the perfect place, all about tourists, but that's not always bad. It's on the ocean, but they've built this gigantic "Water World" out into the ocean, lots of cement, but in a good way. I'll send photos.
We found it yesterday morning while trying to find a beach. We still haven't found a real beach. There's a place next to the resort thingy that the locals use, but it's tiny, really rocky and there's no sand. The beach would be fun for families with children since there's alot of flat rocks that come out of the water, but you definitely need water shoes, or you'd cut your feet up. I have my Tevas cuz I'm not some dummy that only packs flipflops and high heels.... gosh wonder who I'd be talking about?? But because I am so completely retarded fashion-wise, I get brownie points taken away too. Anyway, WaterWorld is not at all like our WaterWorld, but it's the easiest thing to call it. I think that the real name is Sadeer. It's got concrete terraces at different heights, each one has some sort of swimming pool, none are deep, they are made for hanging out and getting sunshine. There's a swim-up bar, and then other bars strategically placed on the different areas. They have little pavilion things where you could bring your group of 5-15 and have cushion areas to lounge. There are cushioned single lounge chairs by the thousands in rows, they have fantastic terry cloth covers so that you don't necessarily have to dry off before sitting down. At the last end is the section for families, this is the only pool that children are allowed. There's a couple of flowing, large hot tubs, but who's cold?? Not in this heat and humidity. We saw it from the sidewalk on our exploration but it has barriers so that outsiders cannot see in, so we didn't know what it was, just looked like it had a bar and outside seating. It turns out that you have to cross the 4-lane road that goes along the ocean and then come in through the hotel on the other side, underneath the road in the passage and it opens up. US$20 per day/ per person. Which is LP30,000, Lebanese pounds. We found it on Saturday morning, we both had swimming suits on but Lexie decided that we should come back in the evening and hang out when it was cooler and maybe eat dinner and then go to the nightclub - I was hoping for a little sunshine and I desperately wanted to get in some water cuz I'm melting, but she had her say. We dinked away the afternoon shopping, had a quick University tour and hung out at the internet café.
We went back to Sadeer at 5pm, Lexie bought a new dress that is fantastic on her, and these roman strappy gold sandals and she's all decked out for the nightclub, so she doesn't want to get her hair wet, so she daintily dips, all posed, draped across the edge of the pool.
Good Lord, it's exhausting being around her. The men are instantly drawn and gawking and trying to figure out how to get me out of the way. I wanted to swim in the ocean, and they have this interior water way that is the ocean and has an deep ocean bottom, I jump in and THANK goodness!!! It was heaven, not too cold, but blessedly cool, I swam laps for awhile, went all the way around the wierd little island thing and got out to find Lexie. She's already attracted some Arab guy who is sitting in my lounge chair, I stood standing above him with my intimidating stance until he moves and she introduces me. He tries to be charming to me, but I don't care, I don't want to talk. Lexie shooes him away and we sit in the afternoon sunshine for a couple of hours. It was too late to get a tan, but it was a terrific way to keep cool in comfort.
We go to the seafood restaurant and sit out on the patio and watch the fishermen and the waves. It juts out into the ocean and is by the light house and they have cases of fresh fish, and actually the fishermen are out there fishing with these really long poles, like 20 feet long, and they don't really cast, they stand on the pylons in the ocean and swing the hook out and stand there for awhile.And it seems that Beirut International Airport is just up the coast, cuz about every 30 minutes a big airliner, usually Emirates Airline, sweeps down awfully close. Lexie orders the fresh Barracuda, I order fried Eggplant. We watch the sun set, and the people at the restaurant do their icky Shisha thing – the water pipe smoking is EVERYWHERE. I guess that it’s better than having someone blow cigarette smoke in your face, but not much. The guest picks some flavor for their water pipe, things like strawberry or mint or banana flavors – odd. And then they puff on the mouthpiece, a lot of women, even the fully burka’d women are smoking Shishas. Smoking is very prevalent here, it’s hard to remember a time in Colorado when there were smokers in restaurants and cars and stuff. Even in the airports, they are smoking at the gates, but not on the airplane itself.
Another tidbit, soda cans, aluminum cans have the full pull tab, like we used to have as children. I had to show Lexie how to do it. It’s the one piece thing that comes all of the way off and you set it on the table until you finish your can and then put it in the empty can. Not sure why.
Sunday, Beirut
Lexie is going to the mountains and Byblos with a girl that she met at Starbucks, I’m trying not to be overprotective, but I went to introduce myself and made sure that I had contact information. I’m spending the morning at Sadeer getting a suntan, yay. Nothing major planned until tomorrow, we fly to Dubai, via Doha, Qatar…. Just a layover.
Monday
Fairly uneventful, except that Lexie drank water from the tap at her house party and is barfing all day through 2 airports. Not so much fun. We are in Dubai now, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s almost like Vegas in that things are organized around having fun. I booked our hotel through hotels.com and actually cheaped out a little bit, but OMG, the hotel is totally premium!! We were greeted at the cab from the airport by 2 bellboys, they whisked our backpacks away and they were already in our room when we walked up. While we were standing at the counter with our passports, another guy brought us each a glass of fresh squeezed watermelon juice to enjoy. We got upgraded from a plain old room to a room with an ocean view, 2 double beds with tons of bedding and 4 pillows each!! We feel like royalty, especially after a week in hostels. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of our hostels, but they certainly did not have Crabtree & Evelyn products for free, in fact just having a washcloth seems like the height of luxury.
YAY, tomorrow the beach, (our hotel is right on the beach), and directly opposite the first of the cool man-made islands that look like palm trees from space. We can see the Atlantis from our balcony. Flying in we see this crazy haze, you cannot see the ground even though we are close to landing. The gentleman next to me on the plane explains that it’s a fine sand that kicks up in a rare way only a couple times per year, they call it “Toze” (don’t know the spelling, but “toes” looks weird). I've stuck in a picture of the Toze, it's one of the sun, but you can look right at it, kinda looks like the moon should, but it's the sun. But it’s still 110` F out there, imagine how hot it’ll be tomorrow without haze?
So we’ll get some sand and sun time and then spend the rest of the day in the airconditioned mega-mall.
Forgive me, I totally sold out. Lexie is getting some much needed sleep at the hotel, so I’m on my own for dinner and there is every American chain restaurant along the strip by the hotel. I don’t submit to Starbucks, I don’t submit to Ruby Tuesday, but I’m in On the Border cuz I’ve been craving tacos for months. They didn’t have Mexican in Brazil either and I just need some. It’s yummy.
Oh, and $US1 = 3.67 AED (dinhars). Keeps me on my calculating toes.
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