Amchit to Saida

Dear Friends. I am sorry but you will have an overload of updates.

But I will break it down in a few reports and if we are lucky I can support some photos.
Ok about 15 days  ago we left Amchit after a great fresh see fish meal at Berth, Gilbert and Cesars house.
Cesar went night fishing the day before with his tank and harpune and brought some tasty fish back. Before the lovely dinner we went to Jeita Grotto. Wow this is realy impressive. A lot of Stalagmite and Stalactites and they are huge. If you are ever in Beirut go and see it. But unfortunately we are only able to remember the site as photos are not allowed. We left our dear friends of Amchit behind unfortunately the problems with the truck was still ongoing and Cesar was still working 24h a day. I hope you guys will one day be able to enjoy live a little and visit us in Europe. Please let us know when you come a bed will be ready!

We cycled via Beirut to the South of Lebanon along the coast. It was ok traffic wise as it was  Saturday and early in the morning. Also they already started to block some roads for the Beirut Marathon (a lot of up and down if Emily wants to try something different to the London one). The coast gets sandier and unfortunatel dirtier the further south you get. Only the private beaches are being kept clean.
However it is a lovely country! We arrived in Saida reasonably late and only had a small incident at lunch when the owner of the bakery we stopped at decided to push our bikes out of the way with his car. He was very sorry (Saying no problem no prblem) and I was saying yes problem when you are a prick! But my Arabic was not allowing for it so I just gave him a dirty look.
Anyhow the bikes and racks were unharmed.
Saida is an very very interesting city. The old town full of life (no cars and no lights in the evening). The castle is nice from the outside better than the inside. And people much more arab than in other parts of Lebanon (maybe because of some palestinian influx).
We went also to the excellent Soap museum and payed a hell of a lot for the not very friendly and rather badly kept Yacub hotel. We were not pleased about this but hey that was all which was available.
The next day we took the minibus to Sur the last big town  before Israel and under UN protection. Sur is beautiful! And the sites, biggest Hippodrom (built by Hadrian, yes the same who built the wall south of Scotland), under water Egyptian Harbour, and Phenician city, were spectacular. The town itself was ok we did unfortuntely not have time to go the the Suq, the beach (sand about 3km long) or the Phenician town outside of Sur. But it was worth the visit.