Saturday trip to the market

Every Saturday there is an organic farmer’s market in downtown Beirut. Today we walked there, a nice 30 – 40 minute stroll (despite the 90+ degree sun and humidity) through Martyr’s Square—the former park-like area that became the bombed out “green line” of the civil war, and Solidere—the painstakingly restored lovely buildings that had also been decimated by war.

Here are photos along the way.

As we set out, the end of our street.

And about 5 minutes later, Tom and another typical streetscape.

A typical bit of sidewalk (left, below). One must always be alert to dips, holes, protrusions and a full array of potential obstacles. Makes life interesting.

Next, downtown, photo below left shows tops of church and mosque next to each other (with a protruding street light, unfortunately). Then (right) can you see two guys painting the top of the Hariri mosque?

In the downtown area, that was off limits for 18 months when Hezbollah and allies set up tent camps in protest over who-cares-now-what, we pass by ruins of extensive roman baths, that are right below Parliament. The ruins are in a railed enclosure, in a park-like setting. Photo on left shows Parliament building above the ruins.

At the market! We buy lucious peaches, some dubious corn (we never see it here), and cold melon juice to go. Usually I get lovely lettuce here but we have just been to the French supermarket and picked up lettuce, so I pass. Of course we have to carry what we buy, so we show some restraint.

We head back. We pass the remains of the old Sheraton hotel--tall thin block in the center, below---that found itself in the middle of the civil war. Don't know why it hasn't been torn down, though we hear it is still apparently structurally sound. Full of holes from various armaments.

And a bombed out church, a remnant of the civil war.

Another city view.

And we are home:

T on the balcony--