Beirut, Byblos, and walks in the city

 Freezing outside, literally.  

We bundle up at noon and walk to La Cuisine de la Croître,  the gourmet restaurant next to the old Bishop's castle... They offer a tasting menu today, 48euros each for three (official) courses.  Actually received 6 sets, all photographed by Barb: beginning chips, amuse-bouche of hummous, entrée of very-soft-slow-boiled (64degrees for 1 hour!) egg in special sauce, main plate of lamb confit surrounded by seasonal vegetables+polenta, then dessert: galette of mango-rhubarb plus pineapple sorbet with dried pear slice, then financier + mango jelly cube.  Two full glasses of 3 types of great wine (I appreciated that the sommelier selected them for us, appropriate for each dish, and gave us the last two halves as credit for one:  white Languedoc Pays de l'Or, then spicy red  CotesDuRhone with the lamb, then sweet Gros Manseng (my favorite, an unusual white) for the dessert.

Walk around the corner to Le Musée de la Résistance, very comprehensive with good A/V accompaniments, and some historiography, some review of the controversies about the resistance through the years since the war, and distinction between collaborators and collaborationists, emphasizing that the former simply cooperated minimally with the occupiers, while the latter welcomed the nazi ideology and were mercifully few.

Walk around the corner to La Cathédrale Saint-Etienne, with its huge buttresses and spare gothic non-decoration (all granite), seemingly the largest cathedral we've seen so far, 23.5 meters high inside, under constant renovation.  And the bishop's garden.