Max Fraser was tweeting from Beirut last week and on sunday I found myself reading a piece about the political situation in Lebanon by A A Gill – and a depressing prediction from a local intellectual that there would be no Lebanon soon. Both things made me nostalgic for a holiday I took there nine or so years ago with my then boyfriend (now husband) and his parents.

We went to stay with my father-in-law’s brother at his home just outside Beirut. As one of my first introductions to the Arab side of the family, it was amazing, daunting and eye-opening in equal measures. It began with my huge embarrassment when my husband’s uncle and aunt insisted that we take their bedroom while they slept on a sofa bed. It continued with the discovery that it’s normal to pass the time together in a room for hours, which if you’re a massive fidget with a burning desire to explore in the sunshine, is challenging. But the incredible moments created by our generous hosts outweighed all this – e.g. Auntie Ayeda cooking up a Lebanese storm and Uncle Maurice driving us up and down Lebanon to see the sights.

This is the view from the back of their apartment – you can just see the snowy mountains of the nearby ski resort. From the other side of the building you could see downtown Beirut where it was t-shirt weather.

Beirut is the most stimulating city I’ve ever visited. In it’s heyday it was, famously, the Monte Carlo of the Middle East – you can still find the glamorati taking a stroll along the promenade or hitting the big glossy shops. By the time we’d visited, parts of the city were still bomb-worn from war in the 1980’s, but there was lots of new building work going on and lots of fabulous old buildings intact – this predated both Syria and the second war with Israel in 2006.

There are many different religions and peoples in Beirut too, making it feel cosmopolitan, and presumably because of the country’s history, people are far more politically charged. I learnt this at a house party one night, which I’d describe as less dancing, more discussing. Or, as a fellow Glaswegian guest (and local journalist) said “the parties here are more like committee meetings.”

I think that photo in the middle was taken to show the mental-ness of driving in Lebanon.People overtake on hairpin bends and there are no one way streets (there are one way streets! people just ignore them).

Some of those photos above were taken at Byblos, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Probably the most impressive thing we saw was the ancient archaeological site Baalbek in the Becca Valley, which borders Syria. Ruins of Roman temples are built on top of enormous man-made blocks that are thought to be the largest ‘worked’ stones in the world. They are not in keeping with Roman stonework and nobody has figured out how on earth they were moved into place or why, so they remain a bit of a mystery.

I’ve never been to such an impressive tourist site that was simultaneously so deserted…

…and yet still I couldn’t take a photo without two heads in the bottom.

All of which is to say I’d love to go back to Lebanon again sometime, it’s wonderful and I hope that intellectual was wrong.