Joe's World Backpacking Trip Stories and pics from my travels.

Well I've covered a lot of ground in the past few days. I started in Ba'albek, Lebanon. It is a small town in the middle of Hizbollah controlled territory but it has to have some of the best Roman ruins I've ever seen. I would say that I liked the ruins there more than the ones in Rome. Almost nobody there. And they were beautifully preserved. They're weren't any other backpackers who stayed in the town (understandably) so I actually felt off the beaten path. As a matter of fact, I didn't see any other backpackers at all the whole time I was in Lebanon. Beirut didn't have anything going for it unless you wanted to spend a whole lot of money. Me, Ryan and Ellen my Aussie friends decided to indulge and went to a French place and ordered Fillet Mignon and a bottle of wine. The highlight of my whole Lebanon experience. It was the first proper, sit down dinner with utensils and everything that I've had since I left Arizona. I've been living off street food for the past two months. So yeah, other than that, didn't like Lebanon so much. I've got to put Beirut in my list of top weird cities though. Expensive cars, expensive clothes, cell phones and bombed out buildings. It was a weird mix. Anyway, that's all for Lebanon. I'm off to up North here in a few days, if I can ever pull away from Damascus. Seriously, I love this city.