Ksara Caves return to Beirut cinema

Zahle morning walk until a taxi comes along to take us 10km south to Ksara Winery, a well-kept beautiful operation where several staff are waiting to show tourists through the real limestone caves where the wine is aged. Then a sparkling new tasting room -- all good-tasting wine (but maybe my tastebuds are out of practice) and gift shoppe.
We walk a few minutes out to the main highway and rapidly flag down a shared "service" minivan. We realize that our earlier ride to Baalbek on a nice new minivan was an anomaly -- this one is a smoky rattletrap (the smoke emanated mostly from the driver and passengers) that careened down the mountain, regularly squealing to a stop in hopes of gathering new paying passengers. At one point the driver held on to a lady's package in order to keep her from getting out of the van to take a competitor's ride. Although he tried to get us to pay double for a ride directly to our hotel, he dropped us at the Kuwaiti embassy where we got a regular taxi, freshened up at the hotel, then walked out to the cinema to see Adjustment Bureau. Always nice to see Matt Damon (Cole's lookalike), and I enjoy such intriguing sci-fi premises; and the NYC location was familiar, too.
After the movie, we walked back to American University of Beirut for a free concert hosted by the German embassy: a wind quintet of superb quality....

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Fleeing Trump, Americans go to Portugal

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