I thought I would share a little bit about our recent trip for those of you who might be interested (others can ignore this post, ha).
I returned from Cape Town, South Africa yesterday. I had to take three flights of 2 hours, 8 hours and 13 hours. Then I had a two-hour bus trip and a 30-minute car ride. I was up for 48 hours straight. But it was worth it!
We first traveled to Beirut on June 9. We were so impressed by Lebanon! What a beautiful country. Our son is a junior at the American University of Beirut. It’s a GORGEOUS campus, set on a big hill right on the Mediterranean. Lots of ivy, trees, and flowering plants. There are still a few bullet-riddled buildings downtown, but most of it has been rebuilt. The Saudis have spent literally billions of dollars on beautiful high rises and other buildings. There are many designer stores, such as Armani and Christian Dior. There’s also an amazing marina with a lot of huge yachts and a yacht club.
We visited the ancient town of Byblos, where you can see 8,000-year old ruins (my husband was impressed at how straight and plumb the stone walls are!). It’s the oldest continually inhabited town in the world. There are also Roman ruins there - it was funny to look at those and think of them as “new!”
Another beautiful place was the Jeita Grotto, which consists of two caves. http://jeitagrotto.com/ This location was selected as one of the 14 finalists for the new seven natural wonders of the world. Wow! Hard to describe how beautiful it is. In one cave, we took a boat ride on a turquoise-colored river.
We also visited Faraya, a ski resort area about an hour north of Beirut. Yes, you can go downhill skiing in Lebanon! The elevation is almost 6,100 feet, higher than the highest point in Maine. We ate on a restaurant patio that overlooked beautiful homes on the mountains.
Sidon was the other place we visited. There’s a huge souk (market) you literally get lost in - a maze of twisting alleyways. There’s also a fort right on the water that was built about 1,000 years ago. It was Ramadan, so people were fasting during the day. As a result, we were the ONLY lunch time customers at an outdoor restaurant with tables only a few feet away from the water and with views of the fort.
My dad has several ex-students living in Beirut. One of them was my husband’s office mate in graduate school -he is now an engineering professor at AUB. He kindly invited us over one night to break the day’s fast with his family. We ate so much! Then the next night he insisted on showing us around downtown Beirut. He had a lot to do with the city’s renovations and his wife is an architect who worked on some of the skyscrapers. We met them at 10 pm and they showed us around until 1:30 am! It was the 27th day of Ramadan, which wasn’t the very last day but considered to be the most important day. The mosques were all open and a lot of people were out praying all night. The city was lit up with lights of every color. Our hosts happened to mention that they had had headaches, because 27 days of not eating or drinking until sunset wears you down! If we had thought of that, we probably wouldn’t have let them give us a tour. But I think they enjoyed it - they are rightfully proud of how Beirut has bounced back. Our host’s wife is young enough that she was just a child during some of the worst years.
Our other trip was to a town adjacent to the big Syrian refugee camp in Damour, about 15 miles south of Beirut. This is where our son travels several times each week during the school year to volunteer. This summer, he is living in Damour and teaching kids English most days of the week. We visited a family with five kids and a sixth on the way. They currently live in two small unheated rooms. One room was formed with wood paneling. It turns out they weren’t supposed to add on the room, so they will have to remove the paneling and be confined to only one room. 
All of the kids go to the school run by the Christian organization that our son works with. The youngsters were bright-eyed and friendly. Our son’s group gives the family food and meds, but the difficulty is that then the family gives some of the supplies to friends in the camp so they still run short. They said they feel they have to help others.
The one difficult part about visiting Lebanon is the driving. Oh, my goodness, to put it politely. We rented a very small car and sometimes it was too big! People pay NO attention to stop signs, red lights, one-way streets, speed limits, or painted lanes. I’ve driven a lot of places in the world but never seen anything like it. Even on major highways, there would be six “lanes” of traffic where only four were indicated. And the “lanes” were totally chaotic - people coming at you from every direction. On one-way streets, you would often see multiple scooters coming directly at you, expecting YOU to yield to them! On one major road, a car a little ways in front of us decided to go in reverse. He was coming right at us, and glared at us when we honked at him!
On our first morning there, the cover to our rear-view mirror fell off as we drove along a busy street (we think it got dislodged the night before when we parked on a very narrow street and a car bumped it - we didn’t realize we should have folded the mirror down). A scooter with two young men on it honked as us to let us know. We just shrugged because we couldn’t retrieve it in the busy traffic. They indicated that they would go back to get it for us, and they did! Of course, we got honked at as we waited for them to return, but that’s OK! We were impressed by their friendliness. Oh, that’s the other thing, the honking - if we hesitated for even a split second, we’d get honked at. But people making U-turns in the middle of a big street weren’t honked at! So bizarre.
I managed to bump our back fender as I was backing up in a small alley outside our son’s downtown apartment. Fortunately, Avis just charged us $90, even though some paint had come off and the bumper was dislodged slightly. I had bought car insurance through Avis, so I should get that back.
I would definitely recommend visiting Lebanon if you get a chance. It’s a vibrant, beautiful country with many friendly people. And getting to see it through our son’s eyes was priceless. Now I understand why he had to get a motorcycle, although it still makes me nervous.
Now I have to take care of paying some bills! I will post about South Africa later. 
Would love to go back there some day.