Day 7 - 9/17 - North Lebanon: Al-Mina, Islands, Tripoli, Citadel, Grand Mosque, Souk, Casino

    As usual, we had a very large number of photos from this fascinating day in northern Lebanon.  We had to make tough choices & present here only a sampler. We will be adding supplementary pages to share more pictures from this day.  

    Tripoli is Lebanon's 2nd largest city & has much history & much to see.  We were able to experience only a few of the highlights from this most interesting city.  For more information on the Tripoli area, check out this excellent source: Tripoli-Lebanon.com. - or try MiddleEast.com (brief overview) or Tripoli-City.org, a very extensive (but often slow loading) site offered in both English & French. We both agreed that we would love to return & spend more time in this part of Lebanon.

Just south of Tripoli along the coast highway, we come to the Moussalayha (or Mousayliha) Castle. Click Here for a closer view of this "fairytale" castle; Click Here for more information on the "mystery" of this place. No time for a close-up visit to this place, as we were soon back on our way towards Tripoli.

Entering the Tripoli area, we come to this roundabout and interesting public "sails" sculpture. This is the entrance to the port area on the headlands called Al-Mina. Our first adventure will be a boat ride out to the islands & time for Patrick to get in some swimming & snorkeling. 

The tour boats are rather large but there are not many tourists (no other English speakers that we know of) on this Tuesday morning. With a little negotiating, Mustapha, our guide/driver, arranges this boat for us. Here our "skipper" expertly takes us out of the harbor.

We are soon out of the harbor, past the breakwater & get a great view back on the city skyline.

With the blue-green Mediterranean before us we see the island here, Ramkine Island, which is most distant from the land - about 4 miles.

After checking out Ramkine, our young skipper brings us a short distance back to a good mooring place on a rock outcropping adjacent to En Nakhil Island.

Quickly Patrick is ready with his snorkeling & underwater camera gear. We have added a separate Day 7 Supplement Album with many more photos taken both below & above the water's surface.

After a refreshing & fun swim Patrick is ready to get back on board for the return trip.

Entering the harbor area, our skipper expertly maneuvers through the many moored boats & brings us quickly to our starting point.

We now cross the street for some delicious Lebanese coffee at the Restaurant Atlal El-Baher. Here the friendly owner joins us in this photo. The specialty here is fish, but it was not time for us to eat & sadly we were not able to return here for a meal. It appears that most of the seafood restaurants in this area have gone out of business. More Photos!

Next stop is the famous Tripoli Citadel, often called the Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles or Kalaa. With a much earlier history, the Crusader's efforts here started about 1100 AD. Here Keith is separated from the Citadel by the moat built by the Crusaders.

Keith inspects the inside of the ancient, massive wood-plank door to the Citadel. One can see here the thickness of these doors, as well as the protective metal plating put on the outer side.

Here one of the massive doors can be seen on the right. Inside on the right of this passageway are 3 Roman sarcophagi that were stored here for safekeeping during the civil war.

Just one view of part of the interior of this multi-floored fortress.

No guard rails here - Keith nervously stands on an arched stairway leading up to one of the higher parts of the Citadel.

While Patrick gets a panorama photo of the western side of the Citadel, Keith gets this north east view of Tripoli from a cannon window.

Keith & Mustapha pause at our car before leaving the Citadel. A huge grinding stone is in the foreground.

This is a view inside the Great Mosque located a short distance from the Citadel. Built on the ruins of an early Crusader church, the construction of this mosque started in 1294.

Next on our itinerary was a visit to the gold souk. The term souk (or souq) is Arabic for marketplace & usually now refers to the old type of narrow-streeted bazaars of the Middle East..  

Confronted with so many shops filled with so much gold jewelry, neither Patrick nor Keith could decide on what to buy. Even though we were told this was a great place to buy gold, we bought none.

Still near the Great Mosque, we come across an ancient Turkish public bath house. We believe the name of this place is Hammam al-Nouri.

Here Mustapha & Patrick investigate some of the details of this now "derelict" bath house. It was built around 1333, but has not been restored.

Now it is time to venture back in to the tunnels and passageways of the Tripoli souk. We try to be careful here to not take pictures of the often crowded passageways as we do not want to offend anyone.

Different parts of the souk specialize in different goods. We believe this is the woman's clothing area where Keith bought a traditional dress for Peg (only $12 US).

No, this is not the outfit Keith bought for his wife. This is the traditional belly dancer's outfit.

This is a little more like the one he bought, which was somewhat less flashy. Here is a photo of the one he bought her.

Here a local fellow buys from a mobile olive vendor.

A most special place! When we stuck our heads in to this metal works shop, the young boy took us through a door in the back that leads in to the rear workshop where serious metal working takes place. Among many other large things, they make arak stills here. More metal shop photos!

Just a few shops down from the copper/brass workshop, we come to this small, but very colorful, shop filled with interesting brass wear.  Here we both bought small interesting brass coffee grinders. This young fellow spoke excellent English & was very helpful. We exchanged e-mail addresses. More

Heading back toward the car, Patrick gets this shot of a couple of street venders.  We were not sure what the one young fellow was selling - maybe juices..?

No trip to Tripoli would be complete with out a visit to the Rafaat Hallab & Sons pastry shop & restaurant. We had a very tasty light meal here.  Check out their online store! More photos & info.

Heading back toward Beirut, we swing by for a brief visit to the famous Casino du Liban. Keith had visited here in 1960 & thought he would like to return. Seeing what the priorities of this country are now, such a visit here became less important & we were okay to find that it was closed at this hour. So a few photos & we were on our way.

This last photo was taken from the front of the Casino and looks down on a very popular beach area. The city of Jounieh is in the background with the Harissa statue of the Virgin of Lebanon & related churches on the mountain top left of center. (See Day 1.)

SEE DAY 7 E-MAIL/PHOTO SAMPLER & Day 7 Supplement FOR MORE ON THIS DAY.

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