LeboLust

This place is amazing! Gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous people. Holy crap. Emiratis - not so much. But Lebanese... or Libonaise en francais... are drop dead.

The downtown is hilly, with buildings clinging to steep streets, and the centre of the city GLITTERS with lights and style. It's true - it's looks a lot like the Paris of the Orient and could have been pulled from one of the fanciest bits of Europe. Who knew Lebanon was this prosperous... at least the parts I've seen.
The American University of Beirut has a stunning campus, too, perched on a lush hill cascading down to the sea - beautiful architecture, easily nicer than most Candian campuses, with a dazzling Mediterranean backdrop.

It's a bizarre place too though because there are relics fom the civil war that raged for 15 years and only ended around 1990. Like the TOWERING old Holiday Inn, which only was open for a year or two before snipers took over it and used it as an aerial war perch. It's riddled with bullet holes, has chunks missing and still has tattered curtains fluttering out of its windows. And it's at least 30 storeys tall, easily dominating that part of the skyline.
That said, it seems as though half of the downtown has been built or beautifully restored in about the past 4 years, and lots of construction is underway as well. Shiny new skyscrapers right on the ocean.
Again, you'd think you were in Europe...

EXCEPT... for the everpresent diesel fumes, and, more arrestingly, for the fact that the main cafe-FILLED square and the streets radiating from it beneath the hilltop parliament is closed to car traffic with temporary-looking metal barricades you'd expect to see surrounding a conference of world leaders. These, I assume, have been in place since the war with Israel a couple of years ago and the instability thereafter. Plus, there are checkpoints for pedestrians manned by camoflauge-clad soldiers with very large MACHINE GUNS slung round their necks and who search the purses of those entering the district. Generally, I feel safer than I do in Canada, simply because there is so much security mingled about with the BMWs and the impeccably dressed Lebs.
Anyway, all of this creates a fascinating place, with the Mediterranean lapping at the sea wall on three sides of the city - downtown is on a rocky hilly penninsula.

Went to a packed gay club last night called Acid - the nightlife here is infinitely superior to Abu Dhabi's, at least for what I'm looking for ie. hot guys, hot music, no ridiculous door policies, no hideous cookie-cutter syled bargoers, and deintely no inflated $70 cover for men without a female slung on their shoulders, ala Abu. It was US$10 for cover including a completely open bar. And yes, I vomited this morning after all-I-could-drink. It'd been years since that'd happened... until I moved to this ironically booze-soaked region.
Plus, people party until dawn, and throw after parties and actually have some killer style, in general, although some of the over-accessorising and spazzy jeans can be over the top and try-hardish.
A massive added bonus is that the night front desk manager at my hotel is a HOT GAY, so I have a personal nightlife adviser at my disposal. We awkwardly beat around that bush last night when I was asking for nightclub advice, and he warned me which one was "full of gays," but then opened up about all the hot-and-not places once I said "that's okay" to the sausage fest. Apparently, Acid goes lesbionic tonight, so it's best avoided.
Couldn't have worked out any better, and I still have Saturday night ahead of me.

O, how I wish I wasn't STILL hungover... at 10pm.
A quick half bottle of red will cure that, I'm certain!

Now, off to figure out what club to go tonight, and where to dine... and drink alone!