A Tale of Two Castles ...Part one

Well, yesterday was a great adventure day for us. We went out to the Chouf to see two castles called Beit el Dine and Moussa.  There was so much to see that I'm going to split this one up.  We'll start with Beit el Dine (spelled Beit-eddine as well). Here's a Wikipedia link that is pretty accurate to the history of this Palace. This is also the summer home to the president of Lebanon. Since it's no longer summer, although it sure feels like it to me, the president wasn't there. Our colleague, Nada, said that if he was there the place would have been swarming with armed military.

 This is the main entrance area. It was really hot but at least it was dry. We can handle that.

 Below, you can see where we entered.

They turned on the fountain a little later.

Here are a couple pictures of us.

When we went into the next area there was this really neat fountain.

We looked around inside and found this "sitting" room. This is where the Emir would see the people and listen to their complaints. All the walls are carved Cedar of Lebanon. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was incredible. I spent a lot of time looking up at the ceilings.

We also went into the area that the president uses for his residence. I saw a room where he meets with dignitaries from other countries. (I saw it in the paper when John Kerry came to see him this summer.)

 

This is a picture that was in the presidental area that I just really liked.

 Below is our new friend and neighbor on the 4th floor Sharon. She's the new MS drama teacher and we think she's pretty nice to have around.

There are also Turkish baths since the Ottomans used the palace as well.

The really awesome thing about this palace is that it also holds the worlds largest display of mosaics. They were everywhere from in the middle of the grass to in little corners and nooks within the palace. Here are just a few of the ones we really liked:

 Here we are in front of the above mosaic. That one was one of my favorites.

 Tim really liked the one below because it has pheasants.

There was also an ancient musical instrument museum here. It was pretty awesome and reminded me of the science project I used to do at HP because they were organized by the type of instrument. Here are a few pictures of the many instruments there:

Here is another picture of the palace that we just really liked:

The view was spectacular. So far, what we have seen of Lebanon looks a lot like this:

This was just half of the day. The next post will talk about the second half but I'm starting to think the Lebanon is the land of awesome day trips and really nice people!