Lebanon here we come !

Lebanon is a small country (10,400 square km) with a population of 4 million.

Here we are landing in Beirut, the  capital of Lebanon.  In the mid 1960's, Beirut was know as the "Paris of the East". 

We are staying 30 miles east of Beirut, but it took us more than 2 and 1/2 hours to drive to our hotel.  We spent the first hour just trying to get out of Beirut.  In Beirut, the blue signs on street corners do not give the name of the street itself, only the "sector name" and the street number.  In addition, numbered buildings are rare, and many streets do not have names at all or are locally known by different names than those given on the map.  Needless to say, we saw a lot of Beirut as we drove around looking for the highway to take us East toward our hotel.

Outside of Beirut, we encountered different problems -- highway and street signs that are only in Arabic.

Although I am behind on my "blogging", we have been in Lebanon for 4 days already.  Everyone is warm and welcoming, the food fanatastic, and the weather superb !