Byblos

We finally have internet!* Yipee! Instead of 20 minutes per picture to upload, it now only takes 5....what an improvement! Anyway, we have been to two interesting places in the last few weeks. The first was Byblos, a quaint (and beautiful) little city approximately 40 km north of Beirut. According to Wikipedia, Byblos is thought to be the oldest continuosly-inhabited city in the world founded between 7000 and 5000 BC. Isn`t that incredible?!

There is a large area of extensive excavations showing the remains of the ancient city, the Crusader castle, the church of John the Baptist, and the old market area. It was truly amazing to walk through it all if not a tad confusing! There are so many remains from different periods and different civilizations that it was hard to get a grasp of what you were seeing!

The castle:


The church:


Some cool pillars in the distance:


Beautiful arch:


Market Area:


TG and TB near the open air theatre:


A couple of cute statues:



We also went to a Byblos Fossil Museum. This museum has a collection of fossilized fish, sharks, eel, flying fish and plants that are millions of years old. We met the proprietor of the museum and he offered to take us out to his land to chisel the rocks and search for fossils in October. Needless to say, the kids were very excited by this prospect! Tigerpapa purchased them each a little fossilized fish and we were on our way back to Beirut.



*I have been using internet cafes for the last 5 weeks which really limited my online time. Not to mention how slow the connection is there!