Byblos

This morning we head off to explore the historical site of Byblos, which claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world.

The ruins of many successive civilizations are found at Byblos, one of the oldest Phoenician cities. Inhabited since Neolithic times, it has been closely linked to the legends and history of the Mediterranean region for thousands of years. Byblos is also directly associated with the history and diffusion of the Phoenician alphabet.

Long before the time of Athens or Rome, it was an independent city state, trading cedar wood with Egypt in exchange for papyrus. Its name derives from the word for sheets of paper, ‘biblos’, from which we get the word ‘Bible’. We explored Egyptian temples, the Phoenician Royal Acropolis and the Crusader castle.

In the aftrenoon we took local taxis into the mountains to visit the Jeita Caverns. From the carpark we took a cable way up the mountain and then walked into the caverns via a tunnel. I've been to various others caverns at Halong Bay in Vietnam and on Majorca which have likened themselves to underground cathedrals. These were the only ones that could legitamally make that claim - they were enmormous - at their tallest them must have been 500m tall. The stalegmites and stagtites came in many forms - smooth, lace-like, curtains and coral. The experience was made even more dramatic when the powered failed and we were plunged, briefly, into total darknesss. We walked, awed, on the pathways looking around and up & down at the continually changing shapes and colours. There was a secondary cavern that we had to board a small electric powered boat to explore - again spectacular sights !

Byblos