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Beirut dances, and goes to Baalbek

Saturday in the Monnot area, Beirut is hopping with fancy sports cars and heavily-muscled guys in boots and t-shirts guarding doors and parking places....and the Theatre Monnot nearby hosts a contemporary dance performance, with families and (mostly) daughters filling the theater.  The pieces were surprisingly lengthy and well-done: first a new piece, entitled "L'Etreinte" (the embrace), a classic romantic piece about man and woman flirting then embracing, arguing, embracing.  Especially impressive was the strength of both dancers, as each at some point carried and twirled the other around. 
Then an older piece entitled Beyrouth O Beyrouth -- this one had a few spoken words, with 5 dancers, variously individual or grouped, enacting the civil war via the metaphor of 5 people in one apartment.  Both pieces were memorable.  We filed out of the auditorium at 10pm, negotiated a taxi ride home (the taxis nearby were clearly cruising for night-clubbers, charging high rates--we walked a couple blocks and caught a regular taxi).  The night was young, Coleman wanted to do something else--we found the Roadside Diner at the base of the CrownRoyale Hotel, and had expensive milkshakes in a determinedly American atmosphere.
   Sunday morning dawned bright and quiet.  Several inquiries as to churches invariably brought the response, "Yes, there's a nice one just down the road, but I don't know it's name".  I walked into a Maronite Church that was deserted though apparently preparing for mass in Arabic (no Latin alphabet evident anywhere).  We checked out of Hotel Embassy, leaving suitcases for a Tuesday return, and walked down to the university to seek an internet cafe--all shuttered.  Taxi to the Cola Bus Terminal, where the first minibus was indeed traveling to Baalbek.  We climbed aboard the 15-seat minibus, waited 15 minutes for it to fill up.
In the seat behind us were a mother, grandmother, two young daughters who were friendly, offered Coleman a cheese-saj (hot pita with cheese) and chatted in broken French.  The ride was not too wild, only somewhat dangerous; the road climbs high, at one point some piles of snow were visible at our level. 
Baalbek after only 2 hours' drive, depositing us between the ruins and Hotel Palmyra, our destination.
The Hotel was eerily dark and quiet -- the janitor vaguely made us undestand that the place was fully booked with a tour group.  The building is, well, atmospheric, with evidence of glory days 80 years ago.  We walked on to Hotel Shouman, whose owner cheerily showed us a spartan room with balcony overlooking the ruins--very spartan room, with bathroom down the hall through the office.  We negotiated down from LL37k to 30k, still noncomittal.  We walked to another place, Pension Jamal, much nicer but double the price, so we agreed to return to Hotel Shouman -- but not after a stop at the CoffeeNet internet cafe, cheap PC connection so I could charge up my GalaxyTab and write yesterday's blog entry.  Nice enough place, with a cheery photo of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Hassan Nasrallah smiling down on us (a little research will show you why those faces are popular in the Bekaa Valley).

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