With only three full days in Lebanon, we decided to break it up into Beirut, North Lebanon and East Lebanon.

Byblos

Heading toward Tripoli in the north is the city Byblos. Byblos contains a vast array of ancient ruins from the civilisations that previously inhabited it. One thing about Lebanon is that the ruins are everywhere, and as we drove into Byblos is was impossible not to miss the Crusader Castle in the background of all the modern buildings.

Towards the Castle is an old souk containing stalls selling all kinds of Arabic trinkets. The Crusader Castle offered amazing views of the archaeological site and the Byblos city. Whilst the archaeological site contained many theatres and temples, it was difficult to appreciate them looking at weathered rocks.
From the site we walked through the Old Town and towards the Old Port stopped at Church of St John the Baptist.

Tripoli

Tripoli was a quick stop, we wandered the markets and a Lebanese man even showed us how he made soap, which Tripoli is quite famous for. After picking up some sweets, we headed back to the car to find my first wheel clamp. Now, I was in a foreign country, nobody spoke English, the accompanying note was in Arabic, I thought we were done. After about 5 minutes of cursing a young Arabic man tried to offer his help, and though he was speaking in Arabic we worked out we should go in the direction he was pointing. Fortunately, the guy placing the wheel locks was only on a scooter and we managed to track him down further along the road, and 5000 Lira (yes $3.30) later we were back on our way.

When we hire a car I never like to travel back along the same route came, so travelling back to Beirut we decided to go through the mountains. Towards the mountains were scattered towns in the valleys and even snow on the mountain tips.