its rather late; ill try to get through lebanon tonight and tackle syria later

picking up where i left off:
i forgot my passport because im an idiot. luckily we left like 2 and a half hours early, so i darted outside to get in a cab to drive back to zamalek to pick it up. i called one of my roommates and he got my pass and gave it to another friend because i had the (brilliant) idea of meeting her halfway to save time, but alas, the language barrier impeded this plan; neither cab driver understood that i wanted to go halfway to zamalek and she wanted to go halfway to the airport, so i just went all the way and... yeah. i got back to the airport with like 40 minutes to spare, huzzah, and i went through security and went up to get my boarding pass (the others had already gone through, and actually i think they were on the plane at this point). unfortunately, the policy with egypt air requires you to pick up your boarding pass 45 minutes before the flight, so the guy was pretty adamant about not letting me on the plane. naturally that was unacceptable, so i (very uncharacteristically) politely and calmly bitched him out until his boss came over and told him to let the stupid tourist on the plane. then the dude got all hung up about the fact that i only had a one-way ticket; apparently you arent supposed to go to beirut to stay. so i whined and moaned about that for a while and again his boss let me in, so now i had about 25 minutes to get through passport control, find the gate and get on the plane (on which the rest of my party was already waiting). so they had a security person escort me to the front of all the lines and rush me through all of the paperwork and then take me to the gate and in the end i made it, yay.
quite a stressful way to start a trip.
ill take a moment now to introduce the key players in these stories: christiana, chelsea, christine, luke and myself. we also interacted with a smattering of lebanese and syrians (obviously), a few brits, some greeks, a german, a couple of italians, and one guy from baghdad.
anyhoo, christiana had some experience with something called "couch surfing," which isnt exactly what it sounds like; there is no water and in fact no standing on couches at all. but there is a website where you can put in your trip information and basically request a couch/bed/floor upon which to crash and people look at your profile and invite you to stay with them. so we had a connection in lebanon, which was ultra convenient; he picked us up and the airport and drove us out to his house in the mountains. his name was walid, and he was quite an excellent character.
walid is, for lack of a better term, an alcohol dealer, and he provides (in addition to various other brands) all of the bacardi to all of the bars and clubs in beirut. that might be a slight exaggeration, but he does sell a lot of alcohol and beirut drinks a lot, so he knows many club slash bar owners and has tons of connections.
we started at his house; first we just wandered around looking at his amazing setup, which included 2 and a half bedrooms, 2 and a half bathrooms, a den, a living room/dining room, a kitchen, and a huge balcony overlooking all of beirut and the med. it was all quite lovely and we took lots of pictures and said "wow" a lot. and then he opened his liquor cabinet and we said "wow" some more, and then we got drunk and had a dance party in his living room. then we went out on the town. he took us to bar after bar, just giving us the gist of beirut's nightlife (which is spectacular), and after a few minutes at every place he would say "shall we go?" and we would move on. but eventually we found a bar with a dance floor and salsa music, so we stayed and danced for a while. eventually we left and went to a rather exclusive club called "basement," which was reasonably small and included a tiny raised marble dance floor onto which we crowded. and then we went to the "hottest" club in beirut, a place called bo18, which is also underground, but the roof opens and its pretty amazing. unfortunately he couldnt get us in for free because the owner was gone (this was like 5 in the morning) and we didnt want to pay the ridiculous cover, so we just looked in the top and then went to eat. the saj restaurant was astonishingly lively considering the time and we had some utterly delicious saj, which is, in case you dont know, a sort of middle eastern version of pizza made with thin, extremely doughy bread and sometimes rolled into wraps. then we went back to his apartment for a nightcap and another brief dance party and we were asleep by eight. yeah, a.m.
we woke up at about eleven and slowly got moving again; we debated about plans but eventually decided to hit the beach. on the way we got some fresh lebanese bananas from a roadside cart, which was an excellent decision, and then we swam in the med. amazing water, gigantic (and slightly terrifying) waves, lots of rocks; all in all a spectacular experience. luke and chelsea and i went out like 100 meters and just treat water and chatted, which was quite pleasant, but then when we tried to swim to shore we were rather crushed by waves and pounded against the rock shore; chelsea tried her hardest to drown and my feet kept getting cut on the silly rocks, but we made it back and went to a lovely little cafe about 10 feet from the waterline. this cafe was probably the highlight of the trip for me, quite honestly; all lebanese food is amazing, but this place was particularly good, and having the sea and the salt breeze so near after spending a month in the tangible smog of cairo was hugely relieving.
then we went to the corniche (sp?), which is basically a huge boardwalk all along the med; its a great place to people-watch, and it also grants access to a place called, if i remember correctly, pigeon rock. this is just a random, towering island in the middle of the sea, but you can walk out onto a peninsula and peer down over the cliffs and see the surf crashing. chelsea and christiana and i sang disney songs as we watched the sun set, and luke found a random rainbow kite in a pile of debris so he darted around compiling pieces of string and ended up flying it fairly well. and then, for some inexplicable reason, the grass behind us caught on fire... but we made it back to the street and went to some art gallery in this dude's house.
walid is some sort of underground art connoisseur, so the "gallery" was quite modern, which im usually not interested in, but this was mostly photography of lebanon so it was quite original (to me, at least) and moderately fascinating. some guy was playing guitar in the background, only he was playing it with a file and he wasnt pushing any frets, so it was mostly just this eerie screeching, which sounds unpleasant, but it sort of improved the ambiance.
then we went to a random sandwich shop and got awesome lebanese falafel and french fry sandwiches, and then we went to walid's apartment and looked at picture books of pacific islands and played with his cat, and then we came home and watched a documentary about the 2006 war between israel and lebanon, which was altogether disturbing and made me question america's relationship with israel, but ill hold off on that judgment, i think.
the next day we went to a tiny town called byblos (sp?), which is extremely old and quaint and cute. we went through their little suq (market) and bought random stuff and then had another amazing lebanese lunch on another beautiful veranda. the owner of the place ate with us too (when he wasnt hurrying around serving the other tables) and he told us about lebanese history and culture and in general gave me an extremely good impression of lebanese people. then we explored a ruined castle complete with a small amphitheater overlooking the med; it was altogether lovely, despite the fact that christiana and christine wandered off and we seriously thought they had been abducted... then we visited this huge vaulted cathedral, and then we went to the caves. i have completely forgotten the name of the place, though i think it starts with a "j," if that is useful, but it was an enormous cavern filled with the usual gorgeous cave formations. we wandered for a while and then, since we were the only tourists inside and the place was about to close, we had a sing along slash dance party with some of the attendants there, and then we went down into the lower caverns and took a boat ride along the underground river; it was very eerie and a bit phantom-of-the-opera-esque, but the guy let us take pictures (usually forbidden), which was quite excellent. as soon as i get around to stealing them, ill put them on facebook, but luke posted his on that site i gave earlier so you can get a preview if you want.
the next day (i believe we are on tuesday now, the 30th of september, though my timetable may be skewed) we wandered in beirut, mostly along the corniche, and explored the american university in beirut, which is markedly more beautiful and appealing than auc. actually, everything in beirut was markedly more beautiful than its cairene equivalent, but lets not go there, eh? then we ate more delicious lebanese food and then we got crepes from a street vendor; they were so good that i have to mention them above and apart from the other delicious food. everyone got something different, so they were filled with combinations of cookies and cream, bananas, dark and light chocolate, and crushed snickers, but i think mine was the best- bananas and nutella.
my whole mouth seriously just filled with saliva...
anyway, then we went to an internet cafe to find out how we were going to get home; therein i discovered that a ridiculous number of middle easterners are addicted to world of warcraft, and also a fairly appreciable portion of them still play warcraft three. surely no one cares about this but me, but i thought it was neat; i used to love that game.
then we went to a cafe in a neighborhood inhabited by hezbollah, which sounds more exciting than it was. the cafe was rather like a castle, which was lovely and extremely impressive, but, contrary to the media-induced american stereotype, the streets were not rampant with wanton violence and the children were not armed to the teeth with automatic rifles and bombs. they were pretty ordinary people; the only thing that differentiated them as hezbollah was the t-shirts. you could have your picture taken and then scanned onto a shirt with a "lebanese patriot," aka "america's most wanted." no, i didnt get one.
the next day we had a lovely breakfast made by walid and luke; we ate lots of bread and raw stuff (olives, hummus, lebnah, random vegetables) on walid's huge patio. then we took a bus to balbek (sp?) and the other four went into some huge ruined temples, but i didnt feel like paying because they didnt look as impressive as the ruins in rome, so i wandered around this tiny town by myself for a while. i meandered into a field and was accosted by a kid with a rifle (a real one) and he told me to give him money, but i laughed at him and walked away because im very brave. actually that story comes across as much scarier than it was in real life; its just more interesting to tell it like that because the accurately detailed version is longer and less exciting.
then we hopped a cab to damascus.
we ended up waiting at syrian immigration for 7 and a half hours. here are the highlights:
-christiana showed a huge crowd of lebanese people a very impressive card trick and they all applauded her until the guards told them to leave the americans alone; apparently they prefer to keep people like us in isolation
-the only bathroom was in the duty-free shop in lebanon, so we had to re-cross the border every time; by the end of it, the lebanese guards didnt even demand an explanation, they just waved the stupid americans through
-after about 5 hours we bought a bottle of gin at the aforementioned duty free store and christiana, christine and i proceeded to get rather drunk in the syrian immigration building. needless to say, luke held me back from talking to the border guards when they finally issued the visas :)
and then we got a new cab and headed for damascus.
and that was lebanon. enough for now; im sleepy.