Ski & beach Jounieh / Mzaar Lebanon

Hey guys,

Im trying to find somewhere I can ski and hit the beach in the same day and have been told lebanon might be the place to do it.

From what I can see, if you ski at Mzaar you might be able to get to Jounieh in under an hour, but I cant seem to find out if theres even a beach near Jounieh.

Does anyone know:

Is there a beach near Jounieh, or anywhere else driveable from Mzaar or other ski resorts?

How long it takes to drive to Jounieh from Mzaar?

Any other info about these places would be much appreciated!

Thanks a lot
Kara

It's technically possible to ski and hit the beach in Lebanon, but only for a very short period of time - usually just a few weeks in April/May.

There are very few public beaches per se in Lebanon - the only two I know of are in South Beirut and Tyre. What there are plenty of instead are beach clubs - you pay money to get into them, and they usually have a couple of pools, restaurants/cafes and sea access. Some have proper sand beaches; many don't. There's plenty of beach clubs in Jounieh (as everywhere along the coast), but I don't really think it's the nicest place to hit the sea. You'd be better off driving about 20km up the road to Byblos - Edde Sands is widely considered to be one of the best beach clubs in Lebanon, and it has a very nice sand beach. There's a few more equally nice but less flashy beach clubs in Byblos as well. There's also plenty of good beach clubs in Beirut itself.

Even though April is pretty warm in Lebanon by northern European standards, many beach clubs don't open until a bit later in the year, so you might have trouble finding somewhere which is open. I'm not sure whether you can drive directly from Mzaar to Jounieh or Byblos, but Mzaar is only about an hour from Beirut, and then it's (traffic permitting) less than an hour from Beirut to Byblos.