Lebanon to Cyprus

Our flight to Cyprus wasn’t until the evening, so we had another half day in Beirut. We kept thinking we were flying back to Istanbul before Cyprus. The reason we actually ended up coming to Lebanon this trip was because there weren’t any direct flights between Turkey and Cyprus (for obvious political reasons). So, we had to fly through a third country. Lebanon was geographically convenient and also on our list of places to see.

Today was Easter in the Orthodox Calendar (of which I’ve now learnt there are three: the Julian, Revised Julian, and Gregorian). I wasn’t aware before our trip that the orthodox holidays were significant in Lebanon. There’s a large Armenian community here.

Anyway, it meant that a lot of things were closed today. We had plans to visit both the National Museum and the nearby MIM museum, about a 45 minute walk from the hotel. We figured even if they were closed at least it would be a good walk.

We took the back streets through residential neighbourhoods using Google Maps as our guide. It’s easy now to download maps for offline use. Driving directions are also calculable offline, but walking directions need the web (you can look up directions while still on wifi, but you can’t do anything else in maps or you’ll lose the track).

It was a much hillier walk than I had thought, also one of the warmer days here, about 26C.

We reached the National Museum, but it was closed. There were other tourists also in the same boat, including a tour group (!) which should have been more aware.

It took only a couple minutes to walk to MIM from the National Museum, luckily it was open! It’s a mineral museum (a systematic collection of all mineralogical species), which was really cool to see. It was way more interesting than we were expecting. Along with the minerals, it contains rare fossils (sourced from the fossil museum we saw in Byblos), including a pterodactyl! We ended up spending a couple hours at the museum.

Walked back towards our hotel and stopped for lunch at Kalei, the same coffee shop where we had dinner the other night. It was a good place to relax for a couple hours.

After that we picked up our bags at the hotel and caught our pre-arranged taxi to the airport.

Getting through Beirut International was long and tedious. First, the line up for the initial security screening. Check in was quick though. Next, the immigration line. This was the longest part, but it was a quick exit stamp once we got to an official. Next, the boarding security check. Finally, we were at the gate, about two hours after arriving at the airport.

Our flight to Cyprus took 45 minutes. We were able to prebook seats and, given how early we booked, were able to get seats 2A and 2B, which meant we were first off the plane and, more importantly, first in line at immigration. Cyprus is part of Schengen, so no visa is required for Canadians.

Got some Euros, picked up our bags, and exited. Our car rental guy (who was meeting us with the car) was slightly late, so we had a couple minutes to worry before he showed up. It was quick to get through the paperwork and into our Suzuki Swift. By now it was dusk and the mosquitoes were out in full force in the parking lot, thick as thieves, stealing our blood.

By 8pm, less than an hour after landing, we were on our way! It wasn’t the best way to get back into driving, at night, on the left side of the road, in an unfamiliar car, with road signage we couldn’t read, but we made it to our hotel without a u-turn, thanks to google maps.

We had booked dinner at the hotel at 9pm, so dropped off our bags, quickly freshened up, and went down to eat. Dinner was okay. I ordered the salmon; Heather had the sea bass. Realized later that the salmon wasn’t local. Oh well. It was a long day.

For those counting (Gerry, Tanya), Cyprus is country number 83 for me and 41 for Heather.