Flying through Riyadh -- we walked outside at the airport, just to say we were in Riyadh. The airport is huge, with 4 identical terminals in a row (from the outside they look like stylized sand dunes). We sought out a duty-free shop, in vain (I had told Coleman we might get a new camera). One (Indian) employee told us "everything here is duty-free, why do you need a special shop?". Ah well. We will use our smartphone cameras to document the trip.
I nervously phoned ahead to the Embassy Hotel, they offered to send a driver to pick us up. Indeed the driver was ready though we arrived quite early. Driver Abdullah told us he lived in Detroit for 20 years.
The Embassy Hotel is in a busy shopping district near the university. The hotel is a 2 or 3 star level, old but clean, with a creaky elevator and leaky shower. But there's plenty of hot water, and a balcony where we ate our breakfast of bread and cheese this morning.
After a tour of American University of Beirut campus, and lunch at Kabab-Ji (hummus and shish-taouk sandwich, with turkish coffee), we found the PasseParTout internet cafe overlooking the campus -- it's quite an elaborate place, evidently a bar/restaurant converted into an internet cafe, with nice leather seats and about 40 PCs with good headphones.
The weather is gorgeous today, sunny and warm. Cold rainy weather is in the forecast.
Likely we will stay another night here so we can attend some cultural events: a lecture tonight by Tariq Ramadan, perhaps a dance recital tomorrow. The university has a string quintet performing on Tuesday night, so we plan to be back in town for that (we depart on Wednesday evening).
Our campus tour was led by Akbota, a sophomore girl from Kazakhstan (who's father worked in the embassy in Riyadh, then Beirut, so she attended schools in both places). She gave us a frank and idiosyncratic tour of the beautiful and vibrant campus. The buildings were largely rebuilt/renovated ten years ago after the civil war. The campus has an exciting feel of intellectual activity, with active gatherings of student discussions -- the larger groups speaking Arabic; smaller groups, English.
Lebanon is in political turmoil, as the various parties cannot agree on forming a government -- the local (French-language newspaper) has what is apparently a regular front-page sub-headline: Still No Government This Week. The political turmoil is not apparent on the busy streets, but one indicator is perhaps the fact that all the televisions -- in shops, hotel lobbies, restaurants, this internet cafe, are tuned to news channels and not sports, not soap operas, not music videos. When we were in Egypt last December we noted the ubiquitous police presence -- here it is not obvious, though there are the occasional police cars cruising by, as in New York or Ossining.
Later we will walk down to the seaside corniche to enjoy the good weather.
I nervously phoned ahead to the Embassy Hotel, they offered to send a driver to pick us up. Indeed the driver was ready though we arrived quite early. Driver Abdullah told us he lived in Detroit for 20 years.
The Embassy Hotel is in a busy shopping district near the university. The hotel is a 2 or 3 star level, old but clean, with a creaky elevator and leaky shower. But there's plenty of hot water, and a balcony where we ate our breakfast of bread and cheese this morning.
After a tour of American University of Beirut campus, and lunch at Kabab-Ji (hummus and shish-taouk sandwich, with turkish coffee), we found the PasseParTout internet cafe overlooking the campus -- it's quite an elaborate place, evidently a bar/restaurant converted into an internet cafe, with nice leather seats and about 40 PCs with good headphones.
The weather is gorgeous today, sunny and warm. Cold rainy weather is in the forecast.
Likely we will stay another night here so we can attend some cultural events: a lecture tonight by Tariq Ramadan, perhaps a dance recital tomorrow. The university has a string quintet performing on Tuesday night, so we plan to be back in town for that (we depart on Wednesday evening).
Our campus tour was led by Akbota, a sophomore girl from Kazakhstan (who's father worked in the embassy in Riyadh, then Beirut, so she attended schools in both places). She gave us a frank and idiosyncratic tour of the beautiful and vibrant campus. The buildings were largely rebuilt/renovated ten years ago after the civil war. The campus has an exciting feel of intellectual activity, with active gatherings of student discussions -- the larger groups speaking Arabic; smaller groups, English.
Lebanon is in political turmoil, as the various parties cannot agree on forming a government -- the local (French-language newspaper) has what is apparently a regular front-page sub-headline: Still No Government This Week. The political turmoil is not apparent on the busy streets, but one indicator is perhaps the fact that all the televisions -- in shops, hotel lobbies, restaurants, this internet cafe, are tuned to news channels and not sports, not soap operas, not music videos. When we were in Egypt last December we noted the ubiquitous police presence -- here it is not obvious, though there are the occasional police cars cruising by, as in New York or Ossining.
Later we will walk down to the seaside corniche to enjoy the good weather.
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