New Year’s day, Beirut

January 1st, 2008.

Bappy New Ear!

What can one usually say about New Year’s day? It hurts? It hurts the precioussss it does. Well today's was no exception. I tried to convince Marcus, and myself included, to move hotel. Hangovers notwithstanding, given the fact a storm had unleashed itself outside, we decided to stay another night in the squalid, manky, dump of a place we were currently in.

We spent most of the morning trying to catch up on some sleep and waiting for the rain to pass. When it finally did, we decided to head out and walk to pigeon rocks: one of Beirut’s few features of natural beauty. It was a pleasant enough walk along the coast, past the shrapnel ravaged leftover building shells from the civil war. We also had to experience the avid beach-goers, playing fast ball in thongs, on the Corniche. We stopped at the light-house for brunch where I decided to have fetah with meat followed up by a nargile. That really did make me feel sick, and I spent the rest of the walk trying not to throw up. We reached the rocks and sat around in the afternoon sunshine and then walked back along the sea-front once more – durng this period I managed to fall over spectacularly, into a ditch in front of a road-full of spectators in their cars. This made Marcus happier than I had seen him all day. I am glad I managed to achieve something memorable that afternoon.

The evening was pretty uneventful. We grabbed some food and took it relatively easy. Marcus tried it on with Ronald McDonald.