{"id":937,"date":"2011-10-28T10:56:32","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T10:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelscribe.wordpress.com\/?p=937"},"modified":"2011-10-28T10:56:32","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T10:56:32","slug":"five-reasons-to-visit-beirut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/2011\/10\/28\/five-reasons-to-visit-beirut\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Reasons to Visit Beirut (TIME Magazine)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In December 2010 I made my first, longed-for trip to Lebanon. Like many before me I was struck by the dynamism of its capital, Beirut, fascinated by its ancient cities, and overwhelmed by the beauty of its landscape. As well as Beirut I travelled to the old port of Byblos (where the word <a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/EBchecked\/topic\/86962\/Byblos\">Bible comes from<\/a>), the cities of Tyre and Sidon, and to the Bekaa valley, where I explored the great Roman ruins of Ba&#8217;albek and sampled fine wines at one of the oldest wineries in the country (founded by the Jesuits in the 19th century). When I came home I wrote a short piece for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/travel\/article\/0,31542,2097982,00.html\">TIME magazine<\/a>, which was due to run in early 2011. But then a young man called Mohamed Bouazizi\u00a0set fire to himself in Tunisia, a wave of uprisings swept the Arab world, and my piece was put on hold. This was supremely ironic as when I was in Beirut the talk there was all about factional troubles in Lebanon brewing once again &#8211; in fact it turned out to be the most peaceful of countries in the region, and my story has now been published.<\/p>\n<p>And here are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/gvsimmons\/sets\/72157625446477939\/\">some photos<\/a> I took in Lebanon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In December 2010 I made my first, longed-for trip to Lebanon. Like many before me I was struck by the dynamism of its capital, Beirut, fascinated by its ancient cities, and overwhelmed by the beauty of its landscape. As well as Beirut I travelled to the old port of Byblos (where the word Bible comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[28,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.travelscribe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}