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Old town of Jounieh
Blog: ginger beirut - 19 May 2012
Jounieh could be summarised as a collection of ill-assorted concrete shapes lining a motorway and littering a whole hillside. But in the old town of Jounieh, a lot of the lovely old buildings are being beautifully renovated. And there’s a lot of work in progress.
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Sky bar on a budget
Blog: ginger beirut - 11 May 2012
I’m always fascinated by construction workers, up in these skyscrapers, miles above the rest of us. Their nonchalance is striking. We pay to climb monuments for a lesser view. When I see the shacks they live in at the foot of these megalomanic projects, I’m glad they get to have lunch up there.
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Shapes
Blog: ginger beirut - 7 May 2012
Not sure why I like this shot. Something to do with the messiness and the shapes.
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Beirut: The Un-Broken Mosaic.
Blog: teach travel play - 22 March 2012
The buildings in Beirut still wear bullet holes from an era we would all wish to soon forget. Their façade an ugly reminder of public violence that neither the Lebanese government nor the media could hide. If bombed out buildings and war stories from baby-faced teens are not reminder enough of Lebanon’s torn past, the [...]
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Lady in Beirut – Part II
Blog: A Lady in London - 14 March 2012
After eating my way through Beirut for two days, I needed some exercise for both body and mind. This started off in the form of a walk along The Corniche, Beirut’s famous seaside promenade. The weather was beautiful on Sunday morning, and the whole city was out for a stroll. My walk went along the [...]
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Lady in Beirut
Blog: A Lady in London - 13 March 2012
Beirut has been on my list of places to visit for longer than I can remember. The city’s deep and often troubled history, its famous restaurant scene, and its legendary nightlife all lured me to Lebanon. With just over a month left to complete my 90 under 30 Travel Project, I added the country to [...]
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Why People Cook in Time of War
Blog: A Traveler's Library - 24 February 2012
Destinations: Baghdad and Beirut Book: Day of Honey:A Memoir of Food, Love and War (Org. Feb. 2011, New in paperback 2012) by Annia Ciezadlo “Day of honey, Day of onions.” Arab proverb. Other books dissect the causes and results of war in the Middle East. focuses on something more basic–the everyday life of people caught [...]This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library.
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A river runs through it
Blog: ginger beirut - 17 February 2012
Driving around on the way to Baskinta we crossed this wonderful valley with its gentle terracing, the shining stream at the bottom, the footbridge over, and the stone hut underneath. I’m sure if a troll lived here, he’d be the most good-natured troll around.
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Fishing boats
Blog: ginger beirut - 21 January 2012
I love the guy in the white vest and shorts. I bet he has a moustache. It was a lot warmer a couple of weeks ago when I took this shot. Looking at it now makes me shiver.
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A mezze just for me?
Blog: ginger beirut - 17 January 2012
I love having visitors here. It’s a wonderful thing to share Lebanon with them, especially when they are first-time visitors with so many surprises in store. Apart from helping them discover a fantastic new country, I also enjoy the whiff of a former home they bring with them. It has been over ten years since [...]
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Hard as nails
Blog: ginger beirut - 17 January 2012
We thought we were quite brave going up in the cable car to Harissa with a baby. This tin bucket looks scarier. These guys are just fearless. And here’s what they are working on. The modern church behind the monument-chapel is said to have been designed as a cross between a cedar and a Phoenician [...]
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Beirut in miniature
Blog: ginger beirut - 24 December 2011
As I write, half of Beirut is in the supermarket stocking up for the weekend. The experience will be hurried and crowded and reminiscent of this time last year and every big holiday before that, when the same shoppers swore, “Never again.” But there are a couple of variations on the theme, because there are [...]
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By the sea
Blog: ginger beirut - 14 December 2011
The cold bright weather has been fantastic for walks – like this wonderful coastal promenade near Solidere that my in-laws introduced us to. Just head north of the Beirut Souks across a bit of wasteland and some heaps of gravel, past the little guard hut with the guard feeding a cat, until you get to [...]
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Slatey stripy sky
Blog: ginger beirut - 25 November 2011
Looking over the port. A great day to wrap yourself in a blanket and watch the horizon.
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Weighing in on weight
Blog: ginger beirut - 19 November 2011
A fellow mummy blogger recently raised the prickly question of whether being told you’ve put on weight is a good or a bad thing in Lebanon. In my decidedly bump-shaped past 12 months I’ve certainly had my fair share of comments about weight gain, weight loss and a surprising number of stages in between. Yet [...]
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Nationwide Firewall?
Blog: ginger beirut - 14 November 2011
I just witnessed some funny behaviour on my Ogero Internet connection. Any website I hit would return a message saying that access was denied due to “policy” and invites me to contact Ogero for assistance. I called Ogero and they immediately acknowledged the problem and said they were working on fixing it. Fair enough. But [...]
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Goodbye summer
Blog: ginger beirut - 5 November 2011
Autumn moved in on the Levant with great aplomb last week. No hesitation, no second thoughts. Just gusty winds and earth-shaking thunderstorms. So I thought I’d take a moment to celebrate the tail end of the summer sun just a couple of weeks ago. Strictly speaking this was already autumn, but as it was warmer [...]
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Mundane luxuries
Blog: ginger beirut - 20 October 2011
And here’s the text of the piece the BBC aired in September, or you can listen here. There is an old saying here in the Middle East that a woman’s grave remains open for forty days after childbirth; so I guess now is a good time to reflect on my recent experience of the maternity [...]
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Public space and personal questions
Blog: ginger beirut - 19 October 2011
Here’s the text of the piece I had broadcast by the BBC back in May. You can also listen to it here. In a city like Beirut where road intersections are a free-for-all, it is only to be expected that any attempt to regulate public behaviour is regarded by locals with ambivalence. In a country [...]
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FOOC take 2
Blog: ginger beirut - 21 September 2011
Just heard from the BBC that my piece on the rapport the Lebanese have with luxury will be aired today, Thursday, at 11am (UK time) on Radio 4 as part of the programme From our Own Correspondent. It will also go out on the World Service several times. I’ll update with a direct link after [...]
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Lebanon in Paris
Blog: ginger beirut - 16 September 2011
Walking through the streets of Paris today everything felt just so… Parisian. I was trying to capture just what made it that way – the wide pavements, the tree-lined avenues, the way the café tables spill out onto the street maybe. But mostly the people. It had been a long time I hadn’t heard a [...]
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Eye balm at Barouk
Blog: ginger beirut - 9 September 2011
The oldest cedars in Lebanon are Arz el Rab, in the north near Bcharre and Wadi Qadisha, but Barouk has bigger forests, at about an hour from Beirut. It’s the perfect place to escape the summer heat of the capital and soothe the eyes after an overdose of concrete and construction. Cedars are particular in [...]
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Job opportunity
Blog: ginger beirut - 4 September 2011
Among the other projects that have been keeping me busy, there have been some developments in my work, which is why I’m now looking to recruit and train a press analyst. It’s a great opportunity, though I’m looking for excellent language skills, so get in touch if you think you fit the bill, send the [...]
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Back to blog
Blog: ginger beirut - 3 September 2011
You loyal readers out there will have realised that my year has been what you might call bump-shaped and, as a result, posting on Ginger Beirut has been rather bumpy too. However, I’m happy to say things are now levelling off and there’s plenty more commentary to come on that topic of which I never [...]
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Five things I learnt in a Lebanese hospital
Blog: ginger beirut - 2 September 2011
Hospital is a great place to go for a full-immersion linguistic experience. The Lebanese discuss literature in French and business in English, but for the murky ins and outs of corporeal function and dysfunction, only earthy, forthright Lebanese dialect really cuts the mustard, even at Hôtel Dieu de France. So if you’re serious about learning [...]
